Crona's Crusade
by Arcbound
Summary: A domain of adventurers and dungeons, monsters and towns. After Crona begins an unwanted odyssey, he is pursued by the King's Guild, an elite group under King Death. Will Crona find a new life? Or will he be found by the Disciple-less Maestro-in-training, Maka? Alternate setting.
1. der Blutmeister und die letzte Hexe

The door slammed shut and Crona jumped, dropped his broom. It sounded like thunder sprang from the clear night. Another witch had come in for the meeting, lit from below by cheap, orange candles. He didn't recognize her at first; she was wearing a cloak, but lowered the hood to reveal her feline ears.

"Medusa is in the parlor, Blair," Crona said, crouching to pick up the broom. "Eruka's there, too."

"And you're out here, sweeping the entryway? Medusa's so mean, making you work so hard while she plans a vacation," Blair said.

"It isn't really a vacation," Crona began, and was cut off by a voice in the other room.

"Crona, was someone at the door? Don't make our guests wait so long, show them in!"

"You'd better go ahead," Crona said.

Blair nodded, then grabbed his broom. "I think you should come with me- it's important, after all," she said.

"Eh?" He shrank back, "I'm not really supposed to interfere during meetings-"

"Crona, who are you talking to? Hurry up!" Medusa shouted again.

Blair got behind him and pushed Crona to the heavy wooden door, and he opened it with reluctance. 'I don't want to be here' dominated his thoughts as they stepped into the dim stairwell. The 'parlor' was a cellar, dug out so witches could hold meetings without being detected. Crona was banned from the meetings from birth, only let in to clean or fetch a tome for Medusa, and thought of it as 'The Witches' Liar'.

During regular meetings, Medusa had one hundred and eight candles lit; today, she made Crona light three hundred thirty-three. Tonight they were waiting on Blair and Arachne, to plan tomorrow night's activities; it was midnight, April thirtieth, and Walpurgisnacht was nearly come.

"Crona, who said you could interrupt a meeting? Have you become a witch?" Medusa asked. She sat at the head of a table, with Eruka at her left. Crona felt his knuckles whiten over the broom handle.

"I said he could, for a reason," Blair said, and held up a necklace. Its lace pattern was designed like a spider's web, with a scarabesque arachnid at the bottom. Eruka gasped and jumped from her seat, before pulling off her hat.

"Poor Arachne," Eruka muttered, as Medusa rose and glared at Blair.

"Why do you have my sister's necklace, Blair? Was it a mistake to let you join our coven, after all?"

Crona, whose natural posture was to look down, saw snakes begin to coil around Blair's legs, and he stepped back. Blair didn't move a muscle, but kept her eyes on Medusa from across the room. "We were coming here together, Arachne and I. Then the King's Guild attacked us, and I was only able to save this much of her."

"The King's Guild!" Eruka put her hat back on and began grabbing her things. "We can't stay here, with King Death's personal guild bearing down! Medusa!" Despite Eruka's plea, Medusa stayed where she stood.

"The King's Guild has grown beyond its own maintenance, with more rookies and so-called proteges than worthwhile Maestros. If they managed to kill Arachne, it's her own fault for being so weak. We stay."

"But Medusa, if they come here we'll have to move any-" Crona stopped as his mother turned her head towards him. Crona felt the snakes wrap around his legs, felt himself shaking, and nothing more needed to be said. After a few tense moments, the snakes uncoiled from him and Blair, and Medusa sat down.

"Sit down. Both of you... No, all three of you. Your blood magic studies and practice are coming along well, aren't they Crona? Let's see how you deal with filling Arachne's seat."

Crona lifted some books from the chair onto the table, and sat down, on edge.

"If they killed Arachne, we'll have to take revenge."

Eruka stood up again, and this time backed away from the table. "We can't fight the King's Guild! Hiding from them like we've been doing is one thing, but trying to take revenge-"

"Are you implying my sister's murder should go unanswered? And on the eve of Walpurga's feast, when we are at our peak?" Medusa asked, and Eruka left it unanswered and sat down. "I don't want to spend our holyday, or night, fighting, so we'll have to take care of it immediately. Blair, where did they go after killing my sister?"

"Towards Brocken dungeon," Blair replied.

"Then we'll leave now," Medusa said, and stood up again. "Crona, be sure to make use of your training. Don't let me find I've wasted all those hours tracking down books on blood magic just so you could do something half equivalent to witchcraft."

"I'll try to," Crona said, staring anxiously at the foot of the table. A place up the table, Eruka had taken up the same pastime.

* * *

The entrance to the Brocken dungeon has more in common with a mineshaft than anything; this is because it used to be a mine. When it ran dry, the intricate series of tunnels in and beneath the mountain the miners dug into was overrun by criminals, monsters, and demons. Wooden beams support the roof of the tunnel, keeping it from falling on adventurers seeking rumored treasures or known bounties. Had it not been for an order of King Death's, it would be impossible to reach the entrance of the dungeon without passing through merchants selling weapons, armor, potions, and charms. As it is, they're restricted to the nearest town, two miles away.

"The King's Guild came here?" Medusa asked, looking around. "Usually they're gaudy enough to leave some signs behind; a loose cloak, or some stray Death Groschen."

"I listened to them after they thought I ran," Blair boasted, unaware she was lowering their opinion of her, "and the one leading them said it was a good omen to run into a witch on the way to the Brocken, and they were sure to advance 'in riches and skill' before the night was through." Blair nodded her head in affirmation of herself a few moments before adding, "There was about four or five of them."

"Only five?" Medusa smiled, and Crona walked a bit quicker as they passed under the support beams. "They underestimate witches."

Past the entrance, torches were lit every forty or fifty steps. Medusa, in the lead, stepped over a sleeping adventurer, before Crona walked around them, Eruka jumped over them, and Blair grabbed a few Death Groschen from their pockets. The sleeping adventurer was not wearing the King's Guild's patch on the breast of his shirt, and so he lived.

"Crona, there's some manner of monster ahead," Medusa called back, stopping. "Take it out."

'I can do this,' battled in Crona's mind with 'I don't want to do this,' and 'Can I do this?' Yet he stepped forward and pulled a glass vial of blood from beneath his fitted and cuffed cassock, still unable to prick his finger at a moment's notice. Crona walked ahead of the others as he pulled the cork gently from the vial, and whispered a few words.

"Schütze deinen Meister im Brocken, Blut meiner Seele." _*1_

A needlepoint of flowing red liquid arose from the vial, supported by an ever thinning base pillar. The sound of a footstep rang quiet from the darkness ahead, at a perfect midpoint between two torches. Like a starting flag, it sent the blood from the bottle through the air towards it, moving in loose, curved patterns to sustain its height. The four heard a cry like a dog's, but deeper and more ranged, then a thud. Behind them, the adventurer woke and, seeing the scene as it was, ran out toward the entrance.

"Der Mond ist voll und grinst dich an," _*2_ Crona said, and the blood pulled back within itself to fit inside the vial, which he sealed and returned beneath his cassock. Eruka wondered what the dead language he spoke was, while Medusa made a mental note regarding his mediocre pronunciation and amateur grammar. 'But then, I only started teaching him a year ago; his progress isn't bad.'

Crona fell against the wall, and leaned there for a moment as the others caught up. The seemingly simple ritual had strained his mind and body, and risked their stability, but it was already over.

"Good job, Crona," Medusa said, clapping lightly as a jest. "You even kept conscious this time. Can you keep that up?"

Crona nodded with blurred vision as he heard Blair telling Medusa to go easy on him, and it sounded like pity. His vision clearing, Crona began walking and caught up to them before Medusa could call for him. He disobeyed his natural inclination and kept his gaze up until they passed the next torch, not wanting to see what he had killed.

The only other obstacle they came across was a mimic; a demonic treasure chest, which follows a natural cycle of eating adventurers for their loot, allowing some of the loot to be taken over time until adventurers cease to be wary, and the cycle repeats. Medusa wrapped it with two snakes and constricted it until it was a pile of splinters and treasure, which she left with the snakes as her own trap.

The Brocken dungeon is known throughout Death's Kingdom as being a labyrinthal dungeon, to an uncommon degree. Having lived nearby for so long, Medusa knew the entire layout, and the four had no difficulty navigating. By halfway through Blair complained her feet hurt, and transformed into a cat.

The quartet reached the Pit. Despite its name, the Pit is not a hole in the ground, but the lowest level cavern in the Brocken; a single room, with a descending ramp of dirt and stone being the only passage in or out, and thus an easy to defend locale where adventurers set up a regular camp, to rest some hours before making the near equally perilous return to the surface.

The torches stopped halfway down the ramp, yet Medusa kept a steady pace. If the King's Guild was still there, or had been there at all, they would find signs of it, or more, in the Pit of the Brocken. None of the four spoke after they passed the final torch, nervous of what the Pit might hold.

Medusa stopped, turned her head. Then the sharp whistle of her vector arrows struck Crona's ears, followed by the crashing-glass sound of the arrows being shattered in the middle. From the back of the room, around the walls, down tables and even on the ground itself, four million, two hundred forty-two thousand, five hundred sixty-four candles were lit. Standing in the middle of the Pit, which is round with a diameter of ten Cronas, if he stretched, a man stood holding a scythe, shards of the snake vectors scattered at his feet.

The man was tall, seeming to tower over Crona even from half the room away while keeping his stance low. The fear and adrenaline the Blutmeister _*3_ felt, and the low candle lighting, did not help this perception. The Maestro's clothing was far from standard; his cassock was patchwork, the base being beige but more colors than there are in a rainbow were used for patches. He wore a tabbed collar, and the stole around his neck was white with violet trim and fringe, and hung nearly to the ground in his current stance. Beneath the stole was a cincture, and Crona realized he was wearing abnormally small cinctures on his arms and legs as well. Most glaring was the crude but clean steel bolt interrupting his cranial cavity.

The scythe he held was not a metal blade; Crona knew it couldn't be, to cut Medusa's vector snakes. It was a Disciple, a demi-man that can transform into a weapon. The years of training the Maestro had put into his fighting was evident from his stance and grip alone.

The witches and Crona turned at the sound of metal on rock. A metal grate fell from above the ramp's doorway, trapping them with no escape. When Crona turned around, Blair wasn't standing at his feet anymore, but strolled contemptuously behind the Maestro.

"Are witches truly foolish enough to accept an outsider into their coven in just two months?" the Maestro asked. "I'm surprised Blair convinced you of her 'witchcraft' that easily."

"Does the King's Guild truly underestimate witches by so far as to think we'd believe such simple lies?" Medusa asked back. "It has been nearly two hundred years since Death invaded our country, yet you continue to think the same traps of yesteryears will defeat us. I'll admit we fell for it the first time, eighty years ago. Your five repeat attempts since then have bored us, this included."

The Maestro smiled, "I assure you the King thinks higher of you than that; your coven is the only one to survive this long. Which is why he sent me, along with his personal Disciple."

"Ho? When we kill Death's weapon, does witchdom win a prize? Will you go back to your motherland?"

"Humans don't have such monstrous lifespans as your kind," the Maestro said. "This Domain of Death is where I was born, where I've lived, where I've killed, and where I'll die- in thirty or forty years."

"Lucky me! Your decades seem to last about two minutes to us." As she spoke Medusa summoned more snakes, which writhed across the floor in a swarming black mass, whispering promises of agony.

The Maestro drew an arc across the ground with the tip of his scythe, and the flood of serpents was forced up and back, as though they had met with the expanding wall of an explosion. Crona stepped aside so one wouldn't land on him, and another did because of that, and he scrambled to brush it off his shoulder, distracting him from the battle.

The bolt-headed Maestro had come near and swung. Eruka felt a gentle push on her back as Medusa moved out of the way, before looking down to see what caused her pinching sensation, to see the curved blade half through her abdomen. Eruka looked up again in shock, her vision fading, and saw the unmoved expression of the King's highest Maestro. He pulled the scythe backwards, both to regain its use and to lift the handle against a new attack by Medusa. Eruka fell to the floor, the black spots in her eyes taking up more area, framing Crona's panicked face as he knelt by her cooling body in the puddle of blood and asked if she could hear him, several times over. That is what Eruka saw until the spots took up her entire vision a few brief moments later, and what Eruka heard until she stopped hearing. It had happened so fast, she forgot to be scared.

Crona reached under his cassock for the vial of blood, felt a prick on his finger and pulled his hand out. The vial had shattered under the weight of the snake the Maestro sent at him, by pure and poor chance. Crona looked up at the fight again, as the Maestro and witch knocked over candles and sent melting wax and metal holders onto the ground. The flickering light was not steady, but by it he could easily see Medusa was matched for the Maestro, and that she was not visibly bothered by her part in Eruka's death.

'After Arachne and Eruka, if what that Maestro said about ours being the last coven in the country is true, then Medusa is the only witch alive,' Crona thought, and pulled off the glove on his left hand. 'The culture of a country from centuries lost, lives entirely in her hands. The only country I've ever known, despite its destruction ten generations ago, will be gone forever if I don't do something!'

Crona placed his bleeding, naked hand on the puddle of blood, and faced the battle again. "Blut meiner Seele und Blut einer verlorenen Seele, schütze deine Geschichte heute Nacht unter-" _*4_

His words, from a language missing as long as the rest of his heritage, were cut off as Crona was pulled up from behind, his hand lifting from the puddle. Blair's arms were beneath his, keeping him from reaching the ground to complete the incantation.

"Silly Crona, you aren't a witch!" Blair said as she restrained him, "You're just a human, so don't try and protect them. Besides, isn't blood magic verboten nowadays? Just leave it with everything else from the past, where it belongs."

Crona's head swam, but he realized the partial incantation was enough to bond his blood to Eruka's, and a steady line of it rose crimson from the ground to his finger, like an inverted marionette. "Unter dem Brocken! Unter dem Brocken! Blut meiner Seele! Schütze deine Geschichte! Jetzt- Eile!" _*5_

The Maestro had noticed his outburst, and ran to Crona and Blair after knocking away Medusa. The combined blood of two souls swirled up as a thick, violent cyclone. It grew and moved rapid and erratic, until it filled Crona's vision before being replaced for an instant by the metal scythe, and the cyclone dissipated into a heavy cloud, which fell and faded alongside Crona's hope.

Medusa saw the distraction and took the time it gave her as a gift, forming of her black snakes a hilt, which expanded in an instant to an arrow and shot out into the stone and dirt wall, up at a diagonal angle. Instead of stabbing the Maestro in the back with her window of time, she decided to take a flashier approach, and bury him completely by bringing the whole mass and volume of the Brocken down on its Pit. Most nights this would be a fantasy, but with Walpurgisnacht so near, Medusa knew it was possible.

She sneered and turned the hilt in her hands, to more comfortably spin around with the arrow's weight and anchorage in the earth acting as a balance so she could put her entire weight into it. With the time that small motion took, her sneer fell intact from her body with the rest of her head, and the arrow turned into a meek line of snakes, as Medusa's body remained standing a moment from inertia before crumbling to the ground. The Maestro did not deign to watch it fall.

"Die letzte Hexe ist tot," _*6_ the Maestro said reverently, and his Disciple returned to the state of man.

"Die let's huh?" the Disciple asked. He had red hair, and wore a black coat above brown trousers. "I don't get it. What'd you say?"

"It's from a dead language this country's predecessor used. I found that phrase last night," the Maestro explained. "In a sense, it means 'We've won.'"

"What do we do about Crona, Stein?" Blair asked, struggling to keep him restrained as Crona tried to pull away and go to Medusa's corpse's side. He muttered, "Medusa, Medusa! I can't even begin to carry a whole country's past on my shoulders alone. Alone, alone- Why did you have to push Eruka?"

"He has studied blood magic, hasn't he?" Stein said, "That kid might not be a witch himself, but he's the closest thing left. He'll probably be a prisoner in the King's dungeons for the rest of his life, else exiled outside His Domain."

Exiled. Crona stopped squirming and thought clearly for the first time since the candles were lit, and looked up. 'If I'm exiled, or put in prison, there really won't be anything left of the witches, forever.'

"We're done here," Stein said, and picked up one of the candles. "Spirit, carry the kid."

Giving an annoyed glance at Stein, the Disciple Spirit went to Blair to grab Crona. When Blair let go of him, Crona ducked and stumbled forward, beneath Spirit's arm. "Hey, stop!" Crona ignored them, unsure even of who spoke, and ran to the hole Medusa's final attack had created. Snakes poured out, and through the straight but narrow tunnel the half moon shone.

Stein turned at the noise, and grabbed Spirit's arm- his Disciple followed his lead and transformed. The Maestro swung, but only managed to slice the back of Crona's leg before the young Blutmeister was entirely within the tunnel. A second offensive proved no use, the blade of the scythe too wide to fit in. Stein reached with his hand, barely missing Crona's shoe with his fingers, and pulled back as a snake bit him.

"Should we chase him?" Spirit asked, unsure what Stein was thinking.

"No, he isn't that large a threat on his own. I'll send one of my protégées to finish him off; it should make good training."

* * *

The tunnel up to the surface of the world was long and claustrophobic. Bleeding, battered, and bitten, Crona pushed everything out of his mind so far as he could, and watched the moon as he crawled up. Time seemed to stop, rewind, and start over from the bottom of his escape. More than once Crona's weak grip missed a rock and he would slip several times his height, before continuing to crawl upwards. Finally, the light of the moon left him, as it continued to circle the world in orbit, leaving his snake riddled tunnel in darkness. Then, miraculous to Crona's mind, the next reach of his arm felt dew covered grass, and the ground leveled off, as the moon came back into view. He was free.

Far above yet below the clouds, the moon laughed blood. Below it, the lights of a town two miles away were dim through the night fog of midspring. Crona used the stone face of the Brocken to pull himself up, and began to limp towards those lights.

'Survive, Crona.'

Each step felt like fire licking his left leg at the calf, yet he continued.

'Don't die here, alone.'

The lights in the distance slowly grew larger as he neared them, and Crona began to stumble and fall down every few dozen steps.

'Die letzte Hexe ist tot.'

Crona reached the side of a dirt road, pounded down by decades of horses and carriages, and fell.

* * *

His eyes were dry, and hurt to open. But Crona did it anyway, laying down. 'I don't recognize this ceiling.'

He made an effort to lift his arm, and sighed when it refused to move. Turning his neck, Crona saw he was under a heavy blanket, and managed to free his arm from beneath it, and sighed again, this time with relief.

"You are awake, Brother?"

Crona's body reacted without consulting his mind, shifting in a moment to the far edge of the bed. "Where am I? Who are you?"

"Relax, Brother. You are safe here, in our home." The man sitting at his bedside was wearing a cassock similar to his, but not fitted. The largest difference in their attire was his lack of gloves, and that he wore a short, tabbed collar. "They found you on the side of the road, a wound in your leg, covered in blood and snake bites. Who dared to attack a priest of Death, Brother?"

'He thinks I'm a priest,' Crona realized, 'and in his sect, too.' He closed his eyes and laid down, relaxed. "Am I going to die tonight, um, brother?"

"The King would not reap such as you are, no- You shall not meet him tonight. I can not promise the same of those who harmed you, though." Crona felt awkward at hearing honest concern for his safety, and turn his face away. "Were they adventurers, Brother? Rogues or bandits, or discharged soldiers? Who did this?"

"I, I," 'I can't tell him,' Crona thought, and said "I can't remember. I walked a long way though, after it happened. I feel so tired," he said, and winced at blinking, "and thirsty."

"I shall bring you something to drink, and a doctor besides," the priest said, and stood to go, before hesitating. "But, I can not. The townsfolk are gathered, the whole congregation at once; they are praying for a quiet and uneventful Walpurgisnacht, and await my sermon. Brother, you are in no condition for me to ask this of you, but can you wait while I relay my orders to a nun, and have our Sister quench you thirst and summon the physician? Your body has lost blood, yet shall live- but will your mind hold out as well?"

Crona gave a weak nod, but couldn't fake a smile, and the priest went. Crona closed his eyes, and wondered how things would play out. 'Maybe I'll become a priest here, and write what I know of the old country's history of witches and language, or study blood magic while I...' His mind wandering with no guide, Crona fell back to sleeping.

* * *

His eyes were still dry, and his tongue felt worse. Crona sat up, uncomfortable, and looked around. No nun, no doctor, no pitcher of water or wine. Through the walls, he could hear pieces of the priest's sermon, to calm the citizenry.

"And no witch shall escape the long reach of King Death, for as many times older than us they are, so as He is to them. That we may see in our brief lifespans the joyful anticlimax of such a war is a blessing no blind luck alone can we 'lay blame to' or say to 'take credit' for this convergence of our times and their's-"

Crona stopped listening and dropped his legs to the floor. If they would not bring the water, he would find it. Crona found his leg was wrapped tight with a short, thin blanket, and that he wore a nightshirt with a small rope at the front; looking around, he spotted his bloodied cassock folded on a chair. Uneasy without it, he stripped and put it on, before covering it with the nightshirt so as not to scare anyone he passed with the blood. Then he grabbed the room's lone candlestick and went out.

He was in a narrow hallway between the outer wall of the church and the sanctuary. At one end was the room he just left, and now realized must be the priest's sleeping quarters. Unwilling to burst into the sanctuary in the middle of a sermon, Crona continued across the hallway to a door at the other end. It was a double door, and was kept shut with a rope which had broken and been retied. The rope itself was coated with dust.

Had he been thinking normally, Crona would have realized this was not a room where drinks were kept. But blood loss, physical and mental exhaustion, and confusion all clouded his judgment. Crona put down the candlestick and fumbled with the knot, his hands shaking, weak, and uncoordinated. He got a grip on a loose end, and teased it out; the knot followed, and the rope dropped to the ground. Behind him the sermon went on, "That the King's Guild will protect us from any outbursts of witchcraft as we saw last year, I hold no doubt, only faith! Faith that Death will shield us from danger, and keep us safe in our humble town."

"He didn't do us any favors," Crona mumbled as he pushed open one of the doors, falling into it halfway through the swing. It caught him, and he stood on his legs again, and realized his mind and body were both tired beyond what he had learned under Medusa's tutelage. 'I'm not going to recover, will I?'

His balance was off, but he walked in, leaving the candle at the door. Around him were dozens of boxes and crates. Each was labeled with a decaying piece of vellum, to identical degrees as the labels were replaced en masse every fifty years. The storage room did not provide any sort of clear path or route through itself, and its function was made clear through that; this was a place to store, not to be. Crona was too lost in himself to pick up those signs, however. His thoughts were growing more simple, more disjointed, less coherent. 'Where's the water? There should be a fountain in here, for the congregation. Oh, is this a meeting place for a coven? But Blair dragged me in, so I can't be blamed or take credit for any time that happens-'

He fell and knocked down a short marble column, a stand for a metal jar. Crona and the jar both fell to the floor, neither landing well. Laying on the ground, the ringing it put in his ear was more than unpleasant, but droned out the pain momentarily. Then, a new sound hit his ear from the jar; sloshing.

Through the open door the sermon continued, as a Maestro took the pulpit and promised to protect the town through the witches' night.

'Ah, am I like this because of the snakes?' Crona thought. 'The priest couldn't have known. I guess Medusa pushed me forward, too.'

Crona rolled onto his side and used the momentum to swing his arm onto the metal jar. It looked like a large urn, with small and intricate designs made of more common metals than the heavy platinum base. The lid was kept on by five slips of paper with red calligraphy on them he could not decipher. Crona ran his fingers along the bumps, and pulled it closer; from inside was the definite sound of liquid rolling along the sides of the jar.

On the fallen marble stand, the vellum label read 'Fettered Malevolence - Protect from Witches at All Costs. Retrieved by Disciple and Priest Justin Law, Purchased by his Father's Father from a Foreign Merchant in the Year Fifty prior to said Priest's Birth, for the Sum of...' The vellum was too decayed to read further. In the poor lighting, Crona saw 'Costs' and 'Sum', 'Purchased' and 'Foreign Merchant', and thought it a receipt.

'If I'm dying, they won't mind if I take some of their wine, even if it was so expensive they kept the receipt,' Crona thought, and began peeling the solemn talismans from the jar. If it weren't for his fingernails, he would never have been able to do so in his condition. The first, then the second, followed by the third. His hand slipped, and Crona realized he couldn't move his legs. Straining himself, he got a nail beneath the fourth talisman and ripped it off.

The fifth he never touched, as it acted like a hinge. The lid fell open, and the liquid he had worked so hard for seeped out, stale after so many centuries, millennia. It had been sealed when the witches' country was overrun two hundred years ago, and it had been sealed when the witches first settled that country a thousand years before that. It was a black, viscous fluid, and formed a puddle around Crona which expanded at a steady rate.

Crona tried to lift the jar to drink, but found he couldn't. He tried to smile at his luck, but all went dark.

* * *

The nun brought his pitcher but found the room empty, and turned to bring the priest, when she saw the storage room door open across the hallway. A candle had fallen over and gone out on the floor outside, and she stepped over it to get in, holding her own candle close to keep a stray draft from putting it out.

Whether anything had been upset would normally be difficult to tell in that room; it was so full, something fallen over might appear as if it had been put there for lack of space. But sprawled on the only open stretch of floor was a boy's body, in a pool of liquid far larger than himself, which reflected bright red as the candle was brought near.

"Brother! Brother! Are you alive?" She gently shook his shoulder, kneeling in his blood; there was no way to be within arms reach of him but to step there. Even as she asked, the nun knew the answer. The amount of blood was more than the physician had ever let from an ill patient, many times over. There could not be any more left within his body; that his heart remained beating until each drop was excised seemed a horrific miracle. She brought her hand back and began to pray for his soul.

"King Death, take him gentle to your first and final kingdom, where I pray to meet you and him again some day. We know not his congregation, but he was a wounded traveler and a man of your cloth in our house of refuge, so treat him well, until the day comes he might meet his family and friends beneath your ever blue skies, and... Beneath your ever blue skies," she repeated, searching for the rest of the words. 'Ever green fields?'

At the moment of her hesitation, the nightshirt Crona wore began to swell over his back, bubbling in grotesque manner before bursting. Two black wings which reflected no light, both feathered and scaled, with the skeletal outlines by which one recognizes a bat's wing, tore through and flexed. The nightshirt, in tatters, fell from him, revealing the bloodied cassock, as the body rose from the ground, suspended from the wings.

The nun fell backwards and gaped, raising her hand to point at him. "Brother, what- what!?"

"Shut up already," Crona mumbled, not fully conscious. His mind swam as though he were in the ocean, floating in rough saltwater. "I'm alone. Leave me alone. Where's Medusa and Eruka? I'm going home."

* * *

"No witch can possibly win against the elite of the King's Guild!" The priest's voice echoed through the chancel, into the nave and sanctuary. "Thank you, Maestro, for reassuring our town tonight."

In the congregation, a young girl was returning to her seat, and embarrassed, bowed briefly for the applause, before going back to her pew.

'Though, I'm not a full Maestro yet,' she thought, but decided their peace of mind was worth keeping quiet. She wore a long button-up coat which came down to her shins, the back flowing farther with a split tail. Around her neck hung a pectoral necklace, with a carved icon of King Death's skull at the bottom. Not yet a full fledged Maestro, she wasn't required to dress as clergy, and chose not to, announcing this with a green cravat tucked into her jacket over her blouse. 'I wonder how Soul is doing.' Her former partner Soul, a talented Disciple, had split from the Guild and went off on his own only a week ago to adventure; selfishly, the pupil thought. For the time being, her training was halted while her mentor tried to find a suitable replacement for Soul. 'If the Guild really wanted to reassure these people,' she thought, 'I wish they had sent someone with a Disciple.'

The sermon droned on, and she wondered what it was that made some pastors capable of monopolizing attention, while others wasted time with repetition.

She was shaken out of meditation by a boom behind the pulpit, in the sanctuary. The priest paused, and turned to look back; the church was silent. The pupil leaned her head back, trying to see what had happened. A pair of large black wings appeared over the pulpit, and the congregation gasped in unison, as the priest fell to his knees. Maka stood up, but without a Disciple, was empty handed and unable to defend the crowd. 'Could someone in here be a Disciple I can use?' She glanced around, but no quick answer was found.

But the wings didn't attack the crowd. They flew, and seemed to hover, above the aisle between the pews, and as it passed she saw they were coming up from a young priest, bloodied and disorientated, mumbling under his breath as he went by. The doors opened in advance of him, and the demon was gone into the night.

With danger past, the church erupted into fear and panic. Shouts of 'It's the work of a witch!' and 'A witch has killed a priest, possessed him with madness!' rang out, and the girl sat back down. She clasped her hands and prayed to King Death, that her mentor Stein would find a Disciple and choose her to settle the matter and prove herself a Maestro.

* * *

*1 - "Protect your master in the Brocken, blood of my soul."

*2 - "The moon is full and grinning at you."

*3 - Blood Master / Blood Meister

*4 - "Blood of my soul and blood of a lost soul, protect your history tonight under-"

*5 - "Under the Brocken! Under the Brocken! Blood of my soul! Protect your history! Now- hurry!"

*6 - "The last witch is dead."


	2. Attempted Slimicide

A gust came and rippled the tall grass, as far as an eye could see. Below some large and drifting white clouds, a dirt road was dug out of the field, snaking between small hills and dips. Hungry and berated, Crona walked down that road until he came to a tree. Its branches formed a canopy with enough shade to build a house under, but he was not greedy and took only enough space to lay down beneath it.

"I really don't like the idea of what you told me," Crona said. "I'd rather not be fused with someone I don't know."

"I'm no stranger!" A voice announced, and a dark imp with a gaggish face emerged from Crona's upper back. "We've been acquainted almost twelve hours! That makes us at least relatives."

"Relatives have nothing to do with time- and if they did, twelve hours wouldn't be enough!" Crona protested.

"Shh, shh, is okay. Papa Raggy will protect you."

Crona felt the growth shaking, as it tried not to laugh, and rolled onto his side to watch the clouds pass, annoyed. "But why were you in that jar? And for how long? And why did you replace my entire bloodstream!"

"Yeah, well, nothing much to do about that now," the possessing demon said. "I was in there awhile because some old dudes put me in, that's all you need to know. There are probably songs about it, by now. What year is it, five hundred? Seven hundred? That town looked pretty different."

"Six hundred ninty-something, by Death's calendar."

"Death's calendar? Never heard of it. What about by the Transarms, or Witches?"

"You know about witches?" Crona asked, and sat up. "Their country was overrun by King Death two hundred years ago. Who are the Transams?"

"The Witches done got beat? Geez, a lump of blood goes and gets himself sealed for one or two little eternities, and all sanity disappears!" The clot sighed. "Oh, and a Trans Am is something you aren't ready to learn about yet, judging from the state of that road- but the Transarms are those guys who turn into weapons; or, maybe they're those weapons that can turn into guys? I'm not really sure."

"Disciples had their own calendar?"

"If they don't now, something's gone wrong for them. But enough about stuffy history and dry dates," it said, "don't you want to hear about my story?"

"Not really," Crona said, and wondered whether the grass was edible.

"Too bad! You're the one who unleashed me, this terror, on the world, so take responsibility and listen!" It swelled in size, and pulled a candle from Crona's sleeve.

"Did I put that there?" Crona asked, but his blood ignored him.

"Convenient I thought to take this from the church," it said, and lit the wick. Then it placed the candle on the ground, a few feet from the tree.

"But it's the middle of the day!" Crona said. "Why would you need a candle?"

"Shadow puppets."

* * *

"In the beginning, was madness. Then some stuff happened, and there was some more stuff. More importantly, about six or seven eras after that happened, I came around.

"I was young, greedy, and incredibly dashing- all of which is still true, mind you. I was a happy little lump of blood; possessing those would get close enough, or eating small pets. But even I had something I wanted but didn't have, a name. That was easily solved by possessing an archivist and looking through ancient texts until I found one that sounded fitting- And it was Ragnarok, that battle to end existence!

"But I got too greedy- by other people's morals, mind you. I think that I was perfectly in the right when I possessed a king and declared war on Poseidon after using the treasury's funds to buy catapulting technology from another country, but I digress. I had many exploits, some more of which I'll regale you with at a later date- this was just the most important. Anyway, after the House of Commons had a Kraken dropped on it by a hurricane I lovingly named 'Sweetie Pie,' they tried to burn me at the stake, ah, but old man Hawthorne was far too slow to catch me!

"Unfortunately, that king's body was weak from inbreeding, so I ditched it beneath a parking lot and nabbed a scholar named... Well, I never learned his name, so I called him Bombastus. Sadly, Bombastus jumped off a bridge after I fell asleep, so my time with him was short lived. Neither the mortician nor grave digger got closer enough for me to borrow their adobes, and roughly two yards beneath your puny little feet, I thought I was done for-"

"I don't get it. What's a Kraken? Who's Commons? What country is Poseidon? What's a hurricane? What are you going on and on about?" Crona cried, befuddled by Ragnarok's stories.

"Be quiet, idiot- just listen and watch!" Ragnarok lit the candle again, having paused in the first place after a gust blew it out and made his shadow puppets invisible.

"And why do you keep speaking with dashes-"

"And I Thought I Was Done For!" Ragnarok said loudly, cutting off Crona. "I slept in that crappy grave for nearly a week, and contemplated whether Asura did anything wrong, when some idiots dug up Bombastus's body for science- or rather, to sell to science and line their pockets. But hey, I can respect that hustle.

"I took one of their bodies and went off to see the world, particularly Glastonbury. It was in the twelfth century-"

"Question!" Crona said flatly, and raised his arm. "I've lost track of the parts that don't make sense, but beyond that, does this story ever get interesting?"

"No," Ragnarok said. "As I was saying, my legend ends in the twelfth-"

"Question!" Crona called again.

"NANI!?" Ragnarok shouted.

Crona reached up to grab Ragnarok's throat and attempted to throttle him, understanding blood doesn't need to breath. "I don't get it! What does 'NANI!?' mean? What language is that? Why do you know so much crap, what are you?"

"I'm one of a kind, except that other guy who's kind of like me, and was the one to teach me those amazing shadow puppets, but I'm sure we'll never meet him!" Ragnarok said. "Now, are you going to let me tell this story, or-"

"No, gramps, skip to the good part!" Crona yelled. "I don't know how I got here- I died in a church, looking for water!"

"You died in a church looking for wine, you lying drunkard!" Ragnarok retorted. "I was listening the whole time! You said you were going to go home, but now we're here. How's that?"

Crona held the clot's neck and narrowed his eyes with a flat expression.

"Okay, me first," Ragnarok surrendered. "That story's far less interesting, so I'm going to sum it up in twenty words or less." Despite not needing to breath, he took a deep breath and considered his choice in words. "I meant to take your body, but was rusty, and fused instead. I flew us from the church, to here."

"Isn't that version too short?" Crona asked. "I don't know know any particulars this way-"

"Get on with your own story!" Ragnarok yelled, and pulled Crona's cheeks. "Get flapping!"

"I don't have a story, just the fact we don't have anywhere to go."

"Then we're level," Ragnarok said, and leaned back against the tree.

The wind continued to gently blow past them, and Crona noticed the field had flowers growing scattered throughout. The temperature was a perfect degree, where the shade is nice but the sun is too, and the wind not unpleasant. For a minutes they sat there watching the grass and clouds, silent.

Crona stood up. "I guess we should get going."

* * *

Crona reached back and scratched his leg, laying down under some bushes. His stomach whined, but he kept his attention on the long stick he was holding. The stick stuck out from the bush, and had a thin rope tied to the end, connecting it to a bundle of grass placed conspicously on the road. It didn't move.

"Will we really catch something edible like this?" Crona asked, and Ragnarok nodded eagerly.

"Will we? You ask 'Will we'? Why, I once caught a land shark doing this!"

"I don't know what a shark is," Crona said, and tried to keep focus on the stick. "How long did you wait for that thing to bite?"

"Oh, about three weeks," Ragnarok said, "I had to swap bodies about ten times. But it was a beauty! Fed the whole camp for a month, I tell you."

Crona dropped the pole and stood up, and dusted off his knees before walking away from the bushes.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!" Ragnarok demanded, "The land sharks will know it's not normal grass if they see you!"

"I'm not waiting three weeks to eat lunch; I'm hungry now!" Crona said, and Ragnarok rolled his eyes at perceived selfishness.

"You'll never amount to anything in this burough," he declared, and crossed his arms. "So? Where do you plan to find a burger joint around here?"

"Adventurers walk down roads like this all the time, but they still eat," Crona said. "I only need to figure out where they get the food."

"Ah, are you being serious?" Ragnarok asked. "They get it at a store, in towns."

"Then we just have to find a town!" Crona declared.

"Do you have any money?" Crona shook his head. "Crona, do you understand how a store works? Let's back up," Ragnarok said, "Have you ever been inside a store."

"A few days before Walpurgisnacht a few years ago I went to one with Medusa, and we didn't need any money."

"Ignoring the fact I don't know who that is," Ragnarok began, "I take it you just, took what you wanted?"

Crona nodded.

"Good! That's what I usually do," Ragnarok said. "The only problem is, sometimes they chase you out of town for that, or throw you in jail."

"That doesn't sound good," Crona said. "How do we get money, then?"

"It isn't too hard. You just find someone outside of a town and take their money- that way, they can't throw you out of town for it, since you weren't in town and they won't know!"

Crona walked five minutes in thought before answering, "But if we take their money, they'd have to take someone else's, and they'll have to take someone else's, and eventually someone will take our's. Is that how it usually works?"

"Not really, but close enough. You see," Ragnarok began to mime twirling a mustache, "adventurers get their money from monsters, who get their money from robbing people who are dumb enough to leave town without protection, who get their money from adventurers."

"Would that make us the monsters in this cycle?" Crona asked. "Because I don't want to be robbed by an adventurer later on."

"That's your concern?" Had it been a real mustache, by now Ragnarok would have twisted it into a carefully tied balloon animal. "We could play at being adventurers, and take money from monsters. Though," he looked down at Crona's build, "somehow I have a feeling that won't be very easy for us."

"It's okay, I've trained for combat."

* * *

Ragnarok watched from above Crona's head, arms crossed, as his host sized up a small monster. It was a green dollop of goo, somehow keeping itself in the form of a falling drop. Crona watched it hop and slide along for twenty minutes, making mental notes as to its agility and athletic abilities.

"It's just a slime, Crona," Ragnarok said. "What you are so carefully studying is nothing more than the weakest possible enemy you could find. They can't defend themselves, they aren't fast enough to run, they have no way to attack besides body-slamming you; and since it's only the size of your head, that won't do much anyway."

The slime had a smile on its face, and the sun shone through its gelatinous body, a shadow inside showing where the monster kept its coin purse.

"Just attack it already!" Ragnarok snapped.

"Be quiet, I'm still observing." Crona stared after the slime, but in his mind Crona was flipping through the pages of an antique tome. He grabbed a stick from the ground and snapped it in half against his knee. Crona grimaced and pushed his thumb into the broken end, until it broke the skin.

"Blut meiner Seele, ich gebiete dir, lass diesen Körper nicht aus Mangel an Nahrung sterben." _*1_

Crona looked away, not wanting to see the cute monster be killed.

"Crona, Crona!" Ragnarok dragged all four syllables out and spoke in a deeper voice, while wiggling his fingers at Crona's face. "Crona, this isn't the time to practice your Muttersprache! _*2_ "

"Hueh?" Crona looked, and saw the slime still smiling as it bopped along its merry little way. "Why is it still alive?" He looked at his finger, and saw a small scab had already formed. "Why aren't I bleeding?" Finally, Crona realized what Ragnarok had said, and asked "How do you know Hexenzunge? _*3_ Why is that slime so cheerful? What is happening!"

"It's very simple, but I forgot to tell you," Ragnarok said. "You see, Crona, I am blood, but to speak I need a host, and you're just too thin for two bodies of blood to fit at once, so-"

"You dumped my blood?!" Crona put a hand to his chest to feel his heartbeat, and was frantic in his search until he found it.

"I replaced your blood, that doesn't make you a zombie or anything," Ragnarok said.

"How could you do this to me?" Crona said, and squatted down. He wiped his face with a glove, "I needed that blood to use my blood magic! I'd been studying it for a year, and was finally getting good at something."

"Don't cry!" Ragnarok said, a rank amateur at comforting others. "I'm sure you were terrible at it anyway! This way, you won't waste your time anymore."

Crona stood up, the annoyance distracting him from the loss. "You sure are a crummy genie, Ragnarok."

"I'm not crummy, or a genie!" Ragnarok seemed to collapse in on himself, before bursting out Crona's hand, the weight bringing it low. "And to prove it-!"

Crona leaned back, avoiding the blade that sprang from the hilt in his hands. It was black, a white strip going up the middle, with metal wrappings near the bottom of the blade.

"Just use me like a Transarm, or Disciple, as you've so strangely dubbed them."

"I didn't make it up," Crona said, and tried to let go of the sword. One hand kept its grip, but wasn't enough to support the weight, and Crona was dragged to the ground. "Why are you so heavy?"

"Because once upon a time you ate too many raisins," Ragnarok explained, "so I had a lot of iron to work with."

Crona got back to his feet and heaved the sword up, barely able to keep it above his waist. "I never trained to be a Maestro. I don't know what to do with this thing. Couldn't you just be my blood, and follow the spells like my old blood did?"

"Your old blood was weak minded!" Ragnarok yelled, "I don't take orders; I give them! Crona! Use this blade I've given you, and chop that slime right in two!"

Crona screamed without knowing why, and ran out to the road, toward the slime. His foot caught on a knot of grass, but he caught himself from tripping, and reached the enemy. Using his muscles a little and gravity a lot, Crona dropped the edge of the sword onto the slime's head, cleaving it.

'I, did it,' Crona thought. The sword pinned the coin purse to the ground, still covered in the gelatinous green drop. Crona lifted the sword to get at it, and the cleaved slime, an eye on either half, came back together from the bottom up, popping up a bit as it finished, and in only a moment looked the same as before as it smiled questioningly at the demon swordsman.

"Ah!" Crona screamed in surprise, and dropped the sword on it again, this time with the point. The tip of the blade fell through the slime's body, impaling it, and lodged itself into the road below.

Crona pulled it up, and the slime stuck to it, now elongated. It slid and dripped off the sword like molten rubber, landing in the shape of a doughnut, before falling into itself to shorten to its regular height and fill the hole in its middle.

"Why isn't this thing dead?" Crona shouted into the wind, "And why is it so happy?"

"Probably 'cause it's not dead," Ragnarok said.

Crona brought the sword down a third time, cleaving it again. This time he put more weight into it, and the slime fell in halves on other side of the blade, either face dominated by its one eye. Crona dragged the sword back, breathing heavily, cautious of his apparent victory, and growled as the two halves rolled toward each other on the ground; the left took several tries to get enough momentum to roll, while the right closed most of the distance. The two halves became a whole again, and its eyes traveled around the face until they were in their proper positions.

"I though you said this was the easiest monster to defeat," Crona said. "Why can't we kill this thing?"

"Who says we can't?" Ragnarok asked. "Let's do this!"

"Do what?"

"My ultimate battle technique- screaming until it dies!" Ragnarok shouted.

"Why is that your ultimate technique?" Crona asked.

"Because it works!"

"Why are you shouting? Why am I shouting?"

"So we can get pumped!" Ragnarok hummed a moment to warm up his vocal chords, "Come on, Crona, I wanna' see that purple hair turn gold!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Crona shouted.

"Neither do I!"

"AHH!" Both screamed, as loud as they could. The effect of Ragnarok's ultimate battle technique on the slime was as follows; its face, the surface facing them, rippled and oscillated like they were throwing fish into a barrel. When they ran out of breath and slumped onto the ground, it kept the smile it had been wearing the whole time and began hopping on its way yet again.

"That didn't work," Crona said, between heavy breaths. "It just, wiggled."

"Don't tell me what I already saw," Ragnarok said between heavy breaths, despite not needing to breath.

"We're going to need a new tactic," Crona said.

* * *

Crona wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and continued swinging the sword against the side of a tree.

"So, like, what are we doing after you get your precious food?" Ragnarok asked, his mood tainted by the repeated dulling of his blade the tree gave.

"I'll probably go to sleep, after all this." Crona gave the thirty-second swing, and panted.

"After that. Are we becoming oil barons? Beggars? Continuing on as highway robbers? All of the above?" Ragnarok asked. "Because 'all of the above' in that situation is more common than you'd think."

"I don't know where Oil is, or how to become its baron," Crona said. "My mind just isn't ready to make that kind of decision right now, because my body isn't ready, and with you in there I'm not sure where my soul is anymore."

"You aren't ready? I betcha' a bigfoot pizza could cure that."

Crona ignored him and continued smacking his acquaintance into wood. The tree gave shade to the road, on the opposite side from them, and Crona paused a moment before redoubling his efforts after seeing the slime was coming in sight. "Help out, Ragnarok! Unless you want the past twenty minutes to go to waste, do something!"

"I'm a sword- there's nothing I can do, except exist and be sharp. But!" Through a process Crona did not understand, Ragnarok made his edges sharper, and the blade made faster progress.

The slime was drawing near, and Crona blinked sweat out of his eyes as he tried to reach the point where the trunk would fall. 'Twenty minutes and counting can't go to waste now, not with how much energy I've spent on this!" Already his head felt light from hunger. He began to swing the sword back and forth, hitting the tree both ways, rather than chopping as though it were an axe.

"Crona, you're acting like a berserker!" Ragnarok said, and added "Carry on."

Crona screamed, and from the tree a snap sounded across the meadow, which the slime heard but ignored, smiling and bouncing. The giant object at rest was reluctant to move into motion, but gravity sent hate mail until it did, and the tree sped up until it hit the ground, shaking the area with a thud. Beneath it, on an 'X' in the dirt Crona had carved with Ragnarok, was the slime.

"Good job Crona! Nothing could survive that; this tree must weigh more than some buildings!"

Wisened by experience, and cynical by hunger, Crona watched. The edges of the flattened slime were showing under the overhang of bark, unmoving.

Then it moved. The edges grew larger and fatter, before crawling up the bark. Crona's and Ragnarok's eyes widened at the sight. The edges reached the top and met each other, and their mouths dropped. They had come to the side to see it better, and a twinkling eye floated up, followed by half a sideways smile. Crona fell to his knees and threw his arms at the sky before pounding the ground with his fists, as the coin purse bubbled up, protected by a bulge of the slime. The lowest part of the slime crawled up the bark above the ground, freed in all portions from the fallen tree, and crept up the side in a trail on either side until it reached itself at the top, and was fully formed once again; a simple, smiling slime.

"Crona..." Ragnarok searched for some piece of wisdom from his centuries of living, and settled on "Let's try robbing someone else."

* * *

The sun was setting, the full day gone by. Crona stood surrounded on all sides by a chaotic swarm of slimes, all different shapes and colors, and some different consistencies, and even different in the basic chemical structure of their flesh.

But he was not being attacked; the slimes saw him an interesting distraction as they hopped and slid and shuffled past, but ultimately all had their own destinations to go. Their homes, their shops, their pubs and their relatives. At least one who passed Crona seemed to be on his way to jail.

"I didn't realize a slime colony would be this... bustling," Crona said.

"Did you even realize slime colonies existed until an hour ago?" Ragnarok asked.

"That isn't important." Far taller than the crowd, Crona saw the common green slime they had followed there and began wadding through the throngs again. Down the main street, past the intersection with Slime Way, through the financial district where slimes and other monsters, mostly cobolds and gremlins, traded futures and options through contracts Crona could not understand in passing, even if he knew the language, due to the many nested and conditional clauses. Into a less affluent neighborhood, where slimes lived when they could not afford to hire cobolds to build them houses, and had to slowly dissolve caverns from a stone wall.

"The crowds are thinning," Ragnarok noted, "and anyone around here won't really care what you do. Are you ready?"

"Mhm," Crona nodded. 'We've come this far- there isn't any choice left!"

They followed the slime until it passed an alleyway. Crona grabbed it from above, and carried it into the darkness of the alley, holding it out at arms length. It looked at him with wide eyes; but then, it always did.

"Give us your money," Crona said, with as deep a voice as he could manage.

Ragnarok chimed in, trying to remember how to sound hardened. "Your money or your life, ya' punk! Which'll it be?"

They glared at it with tilted heads, and it stared at them with a slight swing. This went on two minutes, until the moon rose high enough to light the alley, and reflected off its white, smiling teeth.

Crona dropped it and fell to the ground. "I'm so sorry please forgive me," he squeaked out in rapid succession. "I don't know what I'm doing! All I want is some food, and then I heard you need money to get that, and that adventurers were fine to take money from monsters- but you seem like a nice person, always so cheerful even though we're doing these horrible things to you! Please forgive us!" He planted his face to the ground.

"Crona, what're ya' doing?!" Ragnarok asked. "We coulda' got 'em there!"

The slime stared at them still, its eyes and smile unceasing. It hopped, to a beat, waiting for Crona to look up. When he did, the slime gave an extra bounce before turning and going out the alleyway, down the road, and stopping again to wait for them to follow.

Crona got up and did just that, hesitant at first before deciding any revenge the slime had in mind was fair. It was only another block before they came to a brick building with the lights on inside and out, and a confused murmur of a dozen conversations at once emanated from inside. The slime gave a few extra hops and twirled in a circle, and went inside.

Crona and Ragnarok followed, and pushing the door aside saw it was a restaurant, but with an assembly line instead of an ordering counter. Large metal pots, mostly manned by cobolds, were placed between baskets of fresh bread, bowls, and pitchers of water. The tables were set up as a cafeteria, rather than cafe. In the language Death brought with him to these northern lands, the words 'Community Soup Kitchen' were painted on the opposite wall in bright gold.

"Ragnarok- this whole time, we were trying to rob a slime who had so little money he has to eat at a soup kitchen!" Crona cried.

"So even if we had gotten his coin purse, it'd be for naught!" Ragnarok replied, and wiped a tear from his iconic face. "That little slime!"

Then Crona realized he had lost sight of the green slime, but Ragnarok pulled him into the food line. They waited, and gathered some strange looks from the others; cobolds, down trodden adventurers, wall-dwelling slimes. They reached the bread and soup, and each took a bowl, before Crona nearly dropped his upon looking up.

Sitting on a tall stool behind the counter was the green slime, still smiling, manipulating his body mass to control a ladle in the pot, who had just served them. Dumb founded, they went to a table and sat down.

"He, he wasn't poor," Crona said, dazed.

"That little slime!" Ragnarok growled. He found the tear on his hand and applied it to his face, and sucked it back in through willpower. "He played us!" The animated clot shoveled the contents of his bowl into his mouth, guiding it with the provided spoon rather than eating the soup with it, then grabbed one of Crona's slabs of bread.

"Hey! I thought you didn't eat," Crona said, reaching too late to save the precious carbs.

"I don't have to eat," Ragnarok said, "but that doesn't mean I don't want it. Big difference, little man- you have a lot to learn about your new Blut Schüler _*4_."

Crona ate the rest of his soup without speaking, still humbled by the slime's display, and considered his values, morals, and future.

* * *

*1 - "Blood of my soul, I command you, do not let this body perish for want of nourishment."

*2 - Native language

*3 - Witches' tongue

*4 - Blood Student


	3. Capital Villains

Maka walked down the halls of the King's Guild's citadel, focused on finding her mentor. She passed maestros, disciples, adventurers, priests of Death, merchants, and soldiers without taking notice of any of them. At the end of a long, ornate but empty hallway, she opened a wooden door and walked in. "Maestro Stein!"

The King's head maestro turned his head up from the cartographic papers he was marking. "Ah, Maka. Did you enjoy your mission in Brockton?"

"Maestro Stein, there was a case of demonic possession during my stay. But I couldn't do anything without a disciple."

"So you came straight here, and want to know if I've found a replacement for Soul?" Maka nodded. Stein shook his head. "Capable disciples aren't easy to find, Maka. Anyone qualified is already partnered up with another maestro in training."

"But Walpurgisnacht is tonight, the thirty-first!" Maka protested. "How can I hunt a witch and formally finish my training without a disciple?"

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that," Stein said. He pulled a drawer open and took out a wax sealed letter, "Read this."

Maka grabbed it, and her eyes widened. "But Maestro, this is a sealed letter from King Death! I can't read this; it's addressed to you."

"I already know what it says. He only wrote it as a formality. Go ahead, open it."

Maka hesitated, and wondered whether it was a test. 'Would Stein do something like that?' She decided he wouldn't, and lifted the envelope's flap. Half the seal lifted with it. "Prime Maestro Stein," she began, "congratulations on your accomplishment last night of exterminating the last coven-!" Maka stopped reading and looked up, "The witches are dead?"

Stein nodded. "It took nearly two hundred years, but Walpurgisnacht will cease being a night, starting tonight. I expect Death will announce an annual festival for the day, once the news is public."

'He even calls the King by his name,' Maka thought. 'I knew he was influential in the guild, as the head Maestro, but just how powerful is Stein?' She realized a detail, and asked "If all witches are dead, what will replace them as the final exam of maestros in training?"

"This kingdom is still young enough to have dangers even I avoid," Stein told her. "There will be some reforms, but we should resume final exams in a few months. Oh, but you came here about something, didn't you?"

Maka nodded. "It's about that apparent possession in Brockton," she said. "I was present when he first appeared, so I want to be the one to exorcise it; or defeat it, if it turns out to be a monster."

'A possession in Brockton?' Stein thought, and steepled his fingers. 'I was hoping to find a disciple for her soon, so she could finish off that Blutmeister from the Brocken coven..!' "Maka," he said, "what makes you think a person was possessed?"

"A priest with black wings appeared in the church during a sermon."

"Did he attack the congregation?"

"No, sir. They came from the back, and flew down the aisle to leave."

"I think I heard about that," Stein said. 'Could a Blutmeister create wings? A demonic 'priest' appearing nearby so soon after...' "I'm sorry, Maka, but without a disciple I can't let you track down a dangerous quarry. We don't even know the truth of whether they're possessed or not."

"A disciple isn't necessary for exorcisms, sir. And I know how to defend myself unarmed, so there isn't any reason-"

"Maka!" Stein stood up, and Maka took a step back at hearing the Prime Maestro raise his voice out of combat. "I can't allow you to do anything that dangerous without a disciple. In fact, it seems to me you need to be educated more than trained. Your fighting abilities are unmatched by your peers, even if they're only average for fledgling maestros. Mhm, that's right, it's education you need, not experience."

'Being locked in a monastery won't help me become a maestro!' Maka thought. "Maestro Stein, please! I can handle this on my own, if you will-"

Stein was nodding his head, "Yes, and how are you to get a proper education? The same way it has been done for centuries: travel! Maka! This is your final exam. Tour the kingdom of Death, and don't return until you've found the truth, and dealt with it!"

Maka stood shocked while Stein began talking about reimbursement for expenses and how to recognize a trustworthy hotel or restaurant. "Travel? What truth am I supposed to look for?"

"That's simple, as there's only one truth you need to search for right now. Don't forget, a maestro always keeps their focus."

Realization of his meaning dawned on her, and Maka saluted. "Yes, sir! I'll leave by morning, and be back within a month!" In her mind she added, 'As a full fledged maestro!'

"Good." Stein reached into his desk again, and pulled out a satchel. "I'll find you a disciple by then. For now, take this." Maka looked inside; there was a canteen, a knife and dagger, a compass, several maps, a bundle of blank papers and bottle of ink, and an amulet with Death's insignia she could present to any businessman or adventurer and receive assistance in exchange for a future payment from the treasury. "I'll also have a proper maestro outfit prepared by the time you return. It will be adequate until you decide on a more personal design," Stein added, with a glance down at his own patchwork cassock. "Be sure to pass this exam; there won't be a second option if you fail."

Maka nodded, thanked him for all of his training and promised to succeed, and left. Stein settled back into his chair and returned to marking maps. A minute later his door burst open, "Stein!"

He looked up and saw Spirit. "Ah, Maka's father."

"Don't act like we don't know each other; but, that's not important right now! Stein, where's the disciple you paired up with Maka? I need to approve whatever punk it is myself before he can even think about working with such a perfect angel of goodness and paragon-"

"I haven't found the right disciple yet," Stein said. "And your approval is unnecessary once I do."

"Ah, is that so?" Spirit calmed and sat down. "Well, if you haven't found anyone yet, you haven't found anyone. That's fine."

"I'm glad you understand... Though, your understanding is unnecessary, too."

"I guess you'll have to send some other protege after Crona, then. It isn't as though an unnarmed maestro could be sent against a Blutmeister, after all. Ahaha-" Spirit halted his laughter when he saw Stein smile. "Stein, you bastard! You paired Maka up with someone after all, and sent her against a Blutmeister with a disciple she isn't used to!"

"No, I assure you even I'm not that crazy."

"Ah, that's fine then."

"I sent her without a disciple, instead."

Spirit choked on nothing, and sputtered profanities while Stein ignored him.

* * *

An adventurer in a suit of mismatched armor shuffled into town. Unused to the weight of the suit, he felt he had shrunk several inches, and a popping noise came from his back when he tried to stand up straight. "How do people work in all this?" Crona wondered. "Oh, maybe they don't. That could explain why a party of adventurers abandoned their gear outside a dungeon. Though..." he jammed a gauntlet-covered hand behind the chain-mail, and felt the small sack of metal coins; nearly fifty Death Groschen. 'Is it really alright to spend this? I'm sure they'll want it back, once they realize they left it behind.'

"Let me guess: you're second guessing your right to spend money you found abandoned in the mud?" The voice came from a tiny mouth inside the helmet, inches from Crona's ear, and he cringed at the breath. "Crona! They didn't even leave a full matching set of armor for you to loot. That money wasn't left on accident. It's a payment, reparations to the poor fool who actually decides to wear such a self-mocking get-up! Their ghosts would be offended if you didn't spend it!"

"Ghosts? There weren't any bodies, Ragnarok, only this stuff."

"That's because they wouldn't be caught dead in this; unlike you, apparently. Well, if there's any place to be this ill-dressed," Ragnarok said, "Armsung is probably the place."

The main street of the town was the only avenue worth giving the time of day. Dilapidated slums, shadow draped storefronts, and eerily smirking folk were all Crona could see whenever he glanced down an intersecting street or alleyway. The main street meanwhile was densely populated by adventurers and merchants, buying weapons and armor, precious metals and art, supplies and the rights of live stock. More Groschen changed hands every hour here than every week in Brockton.

"The gulf between the haves and have-nots has always been pretty bad here," Ragnarok said, "but at least when it was a capital city there was more than one road you weren't afraid you'd get shanked on."

"It was a capital? When did Death move from here-" Crona felt the tiny, tinny mouth bite his ear.

"Death? Death! Death was busy building up the southern reaches, anatawabakanoKurona!"*1

"Stop breaking into tongues!"

"This was the capital of the Transarms, before Death came up here and discovered their utility. That's why it's called Armsung."

"You mean the disciples?" Crona remembered the red headed man who tried to grab him beneath the Brocken. "When did they rule a country?"

"Crona, if you aren't even going to make an effort at teaching yourself what I'm learning ya', don't expect me to do you any more learning! Hey, don't stop- you'll get pick pocketed!"

Crona paused in front of a storefront display of weapons, and stepped into the store. He walked the floor while Ragnarok berated him for ignoring clear instructions, and unknowingly received suspect glances from the smiling clerk behind the till. He grabbed a sword and brought it to the clerk, "Excuse me, how much is this?"

"That sword is seventy-two Groschen, and three bits, sir."

"Uh, not the sword," Crona pulled the sword out as the clerk stepped back in fear, but the mismatched adventurer placed the blade and hilt on the chest-high table, and presented the sheath along. "I just want the scabbard. How much is it?"

"That's, I, it's... eight?"

Crona took eight of the coins and dropped them into the man's hand. He turned and left with the sheath. 'What in the world was that boy-' The clerk, bewildered, quickly resumed his business smile, but twitched a brow at seeing it was the same confused, confusing boy.

"Do you sell belts?" Crona asked.

"Certainly; we have all styles and sizes-"

"Um, any belt that can hold a sword will do."

"Right this way, sir." The clerk placed the naked sword below the table, lest it fall, and Crona followed him to a nook in the wall filled with belts hanging from hooks. 'He's pretty thin...' "How does this one suit your taste?" The clerk brought down a belt meant for young adventurers, fifteen to twenty. Crona wrapped it around his waist and latched it to the tightest notch; he let go, and it fell to the ground.

"Huh, no good."

"Excuse me, just a childish prank, you see," the clerk lied to cover up his mistake. 'He's so thin! That was our smallest size... Except-!' "Here's a belt that should be more to your fit, sir."

Crona pulled it to the tightest notch again. "Hmm, it's a little loose. Do you have any smaller?"

'That belt is for children, and it's too big at its smallest?' Nonetheless he kept his polite smile. "Usually we do, but I'm afraid it's out of stock. The shipment was, ahem, delayed. If you would prefer, I could puncture two or three new holes into this belt." Crona nodded, and the nervous clerk took it from him and dodged into the back room where he kept the tools, his heart pounding. 'Adventurer? He's a freak of nature; how is he possible? Oh right, the belt!' He found a hammer and nail and made two more notches, before adding a third to ensure it would fit, while wondering how Crona had survived this long.

"Sir, your belt is finished!" He announced, coming back into the sales area. The clerk saw Crona backed up against a wall, and a newcomer held up the sword he had left beneath the table, examined it.

"This seems pretty sturdy," the newcomer, a boy as old as Crona, said. "But it should be in a sheath, to keep from getting dulled. How much?"

"It's, erm, sixty-eight," the clerk said, attempting to pad the profit margin despite his unease.

"That much?" He put it back on the table, "Too rich for my soul, then. Though," he flashed a grin, and where his arm had been a curved blade appeared, "it's not like I need a weapon."

Crona turned his head as a squad of adventurers deputized by the King's Guild ran past the store, searching for the other shopper on the main street he had come in from. One shouted, "Has anyone seen a boy with white hair, red eyes, and a terrible disposition?" They went past without checking the shop.

"What'd this kid do?" Ragnarok asked, popping a small face off the back of Crona's ear.

'If I ignore him, maybe he'll only take what's in the till,' the clerk thought, and turned back to Crona. "The belt will be six Groschen, please." Crona turned his attention back to the clerk, and tried on the belt; it finally fit right, and the empty sheath hung without hitting his legs much, so Crona took out the jingling bag of coins and gave him the half dozen Death Groschen.

"What's that pile for?" Crona asked as he stopped near the door. The clerk followed his gaze and saw the store's pile of broken odds and ends: visors without helmets, a few loose links from ruined chainmail armor, hilts without blades.

"It's nothing but rubbish," he replied, and returned to keeping an eye on the hooligan pacing along a wall of shields.

"Can I take something from it?"

"Go ahead. Nothing there is even worth the scrap metal it's made of, so take the whole lot if you'd like, just leave us the bin."

Crona reached in and grabbed a empty sword hilt, and fit it into his empty sheath before leaving the store.

The clerk turned back to the hooligan with his usual smiling mask, but saw the store was empty save for himself and the merchandise. He rushed to the till, and found it full, or at least not empty. Crona's conspicuous-sounding coin purse came to his mind. "I guess that kid's luck ran out today." The store empty, he could take his business mask off, but didn't. The clerk felt like smiling for once.

Crona put his helmet back on, and almost lost it after somebody else in the fray of the avenue knocked into his elbow. "This place is dangerous," he noted.

"Dangerous? I told you it was dangerous to go into a store like that, and you're worried about getting your arm a bit bruised? That place was nearly robbed, with us in it!" Ragnarok said, his face peeling off Crona's ear as a scale-size head emerged. "And jingling that bag around, like you can afford to get mugged; no one'll even think twice about robbing people like that, even if they aren't already criminals! What was so important about a broken hilt, even? Why go in? Why am I the one asking about impenetrably incomprehensible behavior, now?"

"If I pull a sword out of nowhere and someone sees me do it, something bad will probably happen," Crona said. "This way I can use you as a weapon without-"

"Without getting burned at the stake?" Crona cringed. "Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want that; even I have empathy, ya know." Crona wondered whether that was true, but his thoughts were derailed as he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Yo, adventurer," the apparent hooligan from the store said, leaning forward to reach him through the crowd. While the masses on either side kept moving, the two of them stayed where they stood. "You busy?"

"Say yes, I wanna' bop him in the nose," Ragnarok whispered. Crona failed to get anyway words out, only a bit of vocal filler.

"Come this way." His hand remained on Crona's shoulder, and pulled him to the side. Crona realized he was being led into one of the suspicious alleys Ragnarok had warned him against.

"You'd better be going along with this just so we can bop him," Ragnarok grumbled, but knew Crona was not thinking of that. Their sudden captor brought them past several buildings before he gave a special knock on a door. "You'd better start running if you don't wanna' see the inside of a slaughterhouse," Ragnarok said. A panel in the door slid aside, and revealed half a face.

"Did'ya lose the guilders?"

The boy nodded, and the panel shut. Two metal bars were lifted out of place, and the door pulled open. "Adventurer," their captor said, turning to Crona with a smirk, "welcome to the 'Afterlife'."

The door closed behind them as Crona's eyes adjusted to the dim establishment, and he looked around. Days old smoke, thick glass clinking against itself, and hand carved dice thrown across a table to the wall and landed on sixes.

"You found him! YES!"

Crona looked in confusion and terror toward the outburst. A short boy with spiked blue hair ran past and jumped over obstacles to them. He halted within arms reach with no deceleration. "It's only been an hour, and you already found him! You're amazing, Soul!"

'Do they know me?' Crona wondered. He strained his memory but could not find them.

Soul sat at the only booth in the joint, and crossed his legs as he spread his arms. "I said I'd find someone before lunch, Black Star." He turned to Crona, "Have a seat, adventurer. Whatever you're having, it's on the house today."

"Umm..." Crona glanced around before pointing to himself, "Me?"

Soul laughed, "This'll be easy. Listen, you want to make some cash, fast?"

"Sit down, Crona- hurry up, sit down!" Ragnarok exclaimed. He retracted into Crona's neck as Crona took off his helmet and sat down, unsure of the circumstances he was in.

"Are you mistaking me for someone you know?" Crona asked.

"You're an adventurer, right?" Soul asked as Black Star sat next to him. After some thought, Crona nodded. "You still have that bag of coins, right?" Crona nodded again. "And you wouldn't mind having some more coins by this evening, right?" A third time. "Then you're the one we want."

An old man hobbled past and left two etched slabs of wood on the table. Crona picked one up and tried to read the engraved words, but some of the small letters were filled with dirt and ashes, and only the headers were legible. He looked down at the other slab, and put their titles together: 'Heaven' and 'Hell'. "What are these?"

"Menus."

"Menus? Is this a restaurant?" Crona asked, and for the third time looked around. The only difference he saw was Black Star, who swung his legs beneath the table, unable to sit still, and hummed.

"It's a list of drinks- the afterlife is what you make of it," Soul said. "Cool and refreshing, or something that'll knock you to the ground. It's your choice."

'Is this legal?' Crona wondered, and put the wooden menu down. "What is it you want from me? And why were those people chasing you?"

"Don't be so cynical," Soul said, as he leaned back over the booth and grabbed a pitcher of water from a table someone laid passed out on. "We've been planning a simple 'business' idea for a few days, and now all that's left to do is find a partner-that's you-and do it. You're an adventurer, so you know how important potions are, right?" Crona nodded, though he didn't know. Soul smiled and leaned forward as he poured a glass of water, "Then you'll appreciate the genius of this plan."

* * *

"Ten of these, five of these, and six of those," Crona said as he pointed to a shelf of colored glass flasks. "And this," he lifted a bucket onto the alchemist's table.

"Twenty-seven." The alchemist pulled out the flasks and placed them in the bucket, each wrapped in a thin rag. As the alchemist wrote out a receipt for the order he asked, "Your party going to a dungeon?" Crona paid him and left without an answer, with the receipt stashed in his helmet.

The bucket was heavier than the last one, but still manageable. "It's only a few streets down," he reminded himself, and stepped out of the way every few steps so he did not bump into others.

"One time I was on a road," Ragnarok reminisced, "and there was five miles between two streets. So we might be going fifteen or twenty miles before we get there."

Crona ignored him and kept the steady march. Soon they reached the edge of the dense town. He put down the bucket and took off his helmet to wipe sweat from his eyes. 'How do people live in this much armor?'

Soul picked up the bucket and moved it a few meters until it was behind a wooden stand. 'Health Potions! Cheap: Good for Adventurers!' was painted over a faded 'Lemonade' on a sign above the stand. Next to the bucket was a pile of metal and glass containers for liquids, and a drum of water. "You went to a different alchemist, right?" Crona nodded, and Soul handed him a half melted candle. with a sigh, Crona crouched and went under the stand.

'My legs are going to cramp again,' he thought as Soul draped a section of sail canvas over the back as a curtain. Down the street, through the wood on one side and dampened on the other by the curtain, he heard Black Star's advertisements.

"Come on over! We've got potions! So many potions! Are you two going to a dungeon? You're gonna' need potions! They're cheap, super powerful, and easy to down!"

"You sure picked a crap job, Crona," Ragnarok said.

"I'm not sure I picked it," Crona replied as he half filled a second hand canteen with a potion before topping it with water, and shaking the combined drink with his hand over the canteen's mouth. He put the lid on and placed it in a crate for Soul to take from when customers returned; an inevitability now that the 'out to lunch' sign was down, following the earlier rush. Soon he heard it; a metal-clad adventurer walked to the stand, put down a few coins, and several bottles, flasks, or canteens were exchanged. Someone else came up immediately, and a regular routine played out. They asked about the alchemist, and Soul told them it was the star protege of a well known master of the art. He went further and gave a testimonial, saying his own party always used this alchemist's potions when they went to dungeons, and vouched for the quality. Crona wondered whether this customer would be impressed or skeptical.

"That's amazing! I didn't know someone like that was coming to Armsung!" Impressed, this time.

"They don't advertise, and only sell in bulk to merchants," Soul told them. "We store the potions until they've aged to their maximum potency." He crouched and pulled out a few containers of the watered-down, off-the-shelf potions. "How many?"

"We've got a party of three, and aren't able to carry too much at once-"

"Two bottles for each of you? No problem."

'I'm pretty sure he only wanted three,' Crona thought, while next to him Ragnarok admired Soul's salesmanship.

"Uhh, sure, two each. How much are they?"

"Only three Groschen each, but since your a first time buyer I'll throw in a discount. Hey, want a sample?" Soul poured a small glass from a distilled potion, the most expensive they had and the only one he refused to water down or sell. "This is just an average example of our wares."

"I'm not sure I can afford three-Groschen potions," the customer said, but took a sip of the sample anyway. Then he gulped down the rest, "Hey, that's good!"

"He's the successor of a master alchemist, after all. With the discount, fifteen Groschen, right?" Above his head Crona heard the coins dropped on the table, and the potions were taken. Soul grabbed the coins and put them in a bag, "Thank you for your patronage!"

"For that stuff, three each is a bargain! I feel like I could take on a witch..." The customer trailed off as they walked away, confident they had taken advantage of an inexperienced merchant and bought potions each worth ten Groschen, at least.

The above exchange played out, over and over, and varied in length and details only.

Another clinking adventurer walked up, faster than usual. 'Did someone skip the line?' Crona wondered. Someone bumped into the stand, and it hit his head. Annoyed, he put down a flask he had filled and covered the candle with his helmet before he uncorked a knot in the wood, and peered through.

An impressively armored adventurer with black hair was standing over him, and held up a struggling Black Star by the back of his shirt. Soul took a step back, and placed a hand near the money bag. "Is this dullard with you?" the adventurer asked. Soul nodded, frowning. "And this 'establishment' is yours? Those potions?"

"We only sell the best, sir-"

The adventurer tossed Black Star to the side and kicked the stand from the side, his entire weight in the impact. Beneath his fluttering cloak Crona saw the emblem of the King's Guild. Soul grabbed the bag of money to keep it from being scattered, but the stand fell to its side, and revealed the operation. Crona had his hands over his head to protect it, and felt warm sunlight, then felt he was in a puddle. He opened his eyes and saw the Guildsman standing with his sword stabbed into the drum of water, to prove his suspicions.

"Watering down potions? Do none of you three have any morals?"

"I sold mine," Soul said, and considered the best way to lose the forming mob within the alleys.

"I discovered a half dozen parties dragging themselves out of a dungeon they were ill prepared for, because their potions weren't effective. No, they did have a use; one adventurer told me he tossed a flask he bought from you at a monster, and the beast died on the spot!" The Guildsman sheathed his sword and grabbed Soul's arm. "All three of you are hereby in the custody of the King's Guild... Wait, aren't you-"

Soul tore away as he reached into the money bag and tossed a heaving handful of coins to the gathering crowd, and ran. Black Star returned to his senses and instinctively, or maybe habitually, followed him. Crona sat stunned until a voice in his head yelled, "Run, Crona! I've been to jail in enough bodies to know you wouldn't like it!" Helmet in hand, Crona stumbled forward and ran after them.

Unfamiliar with the alleys, Crona tripped several times, and picked himself up with the mob never far behind. At every intersection he glanced both ways to see where Soul and Black Star turned, and soon lost sight of them. The mob likewise disappeared.

"Ragnarok, which way is everyone?"

Ragnarok hummed the opening bars of an ancient song, and Crona gave up on getting any help. After he walked aimless a few blocks, Crona heard shouts, yells, and jingling coins. He ran to it, and found a stretch of alley clogged with people. They were picking up piles of coins, with shreds of a torn money bag blowing in the wind.

"Half of you, put this money together and guard it. Don't run off with it, and watch your fellows to keep them from thieving!" the Guildsman shouted. "Everyone else, keep searching for them!" More shouts arose as a majority of the crowd argued for their being on the profitable half.

Crona doubled back on his tracks and went around, and soon recognized the area as the neighborhood of the 'Afterlife'. When he was sure no one was watching him, Crona knocked on the door the same way Soul had earlier. The door opened and he was pulled in. When his eyes adjusted again, Crona saw Soul and Black Star, annoyed but excited. On their table lay two armfuls of coinage.

* * *

Crona woke up in darkness and pushed himself up in a panic. His helmet fell off and he remembered where he was. 'Is it morning already?' Across the table, Black Star was still asleep. Between them, Soul counted the stacks of coins and figured a new scheme.

"It's only eight o'clock and I've already got our next job planned out," Soul said, as he noticed Crona was awake.

"That's what you've been doing since we got back yesterday?" Crona asked. "Why not get a normal job, or be an adventurer? Ending every day with a mob chasing you... It doesn't seem like something that can last more than a week."

"It's fine. Once we get enough cash stockpiled, we can move on to a different town and begin reusing tricks," Soul said. "Then once we've pull a few over on people in that place, we'll move again before we get too infamous."

"You can't get too famous," Black Star mumbled, half asleep.

"I'm not sure I want to keep conning people, though," Crona said. "It's too troublesome; I'm sure they don't like it, either."

"It doesn't matter whether or not they like it," Soul said. "I've been having bad luck for awhile, or thought I was. Then I realized it was society's fault, not mine. This is just a way of excising reparations. Haven't you been through some trouble, too? As far as I'm concerned, we're just taking a fraction of a fortune from the fortunate."

"I've had some bad times recently," Crona admitted. "That's true. But I don't know that it's alright to go this far."

"Well, it's too late to back out now." Soul stood up and pushed the coins into a sturdier bag than the one yesterday. "I don't have a choice but to keep this up. The King's Guild wants me, so it isn't like I can get a regular job, or screw around adventuring. And after yesterday, they'll want you too."

'I'm pretty sure they already wanted me before yesterday,' Crona thought, and sighed. 'Well, it's not like a have a choice, either.'

"This is boring, Crona," Ragnarok whined into his ear. "Just accept the crime and avoid the time, like usual." Panicked, Crona slapped his ear, and Ragnarok's face absorbed back into his head before Soul noticed it.

"Have we got flies in here? Oh well," Soul was handed a bottle by the old man with the busted knee, and poured three glasses as Black Star sat up and yawned. He pushed one to Crona, "They don't serve food here, so this will have to tide you over until lunch."

'I still don't think this is legal,' Crona thought, but picked it up anyway. He raised the glass to his mouth, tilted it up, and the unidentified liquid ran down his chin. He put down the glass and wiped his mouth.

"What are you, still half asleep or something?" Soul asked before taking a drink.

Crona shrugged and breathed through his nose until he was able to open his mouth; Ragnarok had sealed his lips by sewing them with blood. "I'm going to the restroom," Crona mumbled.

"Don't take too long; we're leaving soon!" Soul called after him.

Crona followed a sign to an outhouse, and closed the door. "What the heck, Ragnarok! What if I'd had a head cold and couldn't breath through my nose? That might've killed me!"

"And if you had drank that it might've killed me; and you too, by extension!" Ragnarok shot back. "You idiot, Crona! I'm your bloodstream; don't go experimenting with alcohol! One glass for you is like fifteen for me!"

"I didn't know that-"

"You don't know much at all, I'd say. Or you just didn't care, more likely."

"Crona!" Black Star knocked on the door, "We're ready to go, man! Let's get rich quick today too!"

* * *

"Anyone coming yet?" Black Star asked.

Crona turned and shook his head. He returned to watching for passers-by, and looked over a pile of rocks. The rocks acted as an extended wall of the grotto Soul found, and hid them from view. "Wait, someone's coming... No, they don't look like they need new equipment."

"That's fine, we'll keep waiting," Soul said. "Our margins are going to be wide enough that we can handle gaps like this."

"How about now?" Black Star asked five minutes later. "Someone has to be coming past, by now!"

"A lot of people came by, but I don't think they would be customers," Crona said.

"Relax, Black Star. We don't need marketing for this job," Soul told him, and poured a glass of water. "Sooner or later, someone will come by looking desperate. We'll be here when they do, and Crona will go out and ask them if they'd like to buy a brand new weapon, or shield, or helmet.

"'But sir,' they'll say, 'King Death forbids merchants from selling to adventurers out of towns and trading posts!'

"'Death isn't omnipresent,' I'll come out and say, 'so what's the harm? I just happen to have what you're looking for; I'm no merchant, just another common adventurer with an uncommon sword.'

"'Well, if we're both adventurers,' they'll figure, 'I suppose the King won't mind too badly. How much is your sword worth?'

"'Before I tell you that, let me explain how I got this sword,' I'll say to them. 'Five years ago I was in the Kings' Guild myself, and we were sent on a mission to the west, to discover the fate of an ancient trading post at the end of a several hundred mile road. When we arrived after a month, it was to find the place a utopia, a heavenly land!

"'The post had been built up around and eventually forgotten about after the merchants were snowed in one winter, long ago, and each merchant took a different trade, and they became craftsmen. The winter was nine months long, and when finally in autumn the thaw came they had forgotten all about their mercantile careers and dedicated themselves to their new lives. In two decades their sons and daughters were born, raised, and taught to be experts in the same trades as their parents, and this went on for six generations, while each succeeded the previous in quality, until we arrived to find it a true community of fraternity and sisterhood! No monastery, no nunnery, no ornate cathedral could compare!'

"And around here they'll interrupt, 'That's fine and well, but how much do you want for the sword?' And I'll tell 'em-

"'I'm getting to that. Anyway, having long given up their notions of wealth for a different kind of enrichment, and besides, being stuck in pre-inflation notions of monetary value from six generations ago, they were willing to sell a caravan full of their finest wares to our party of six for less than an empty caravan would cost anywhere else! Of course we agreed, and vanquished a terrorizing local warlord for them to ease our consciences. We sold most of the wares upon our return, and paid a double tithe to the King after, but each of us kept hold of a few things we couldn't bear to part with. Through my best friend's funeral gasps on a battlefield not last year against an uprising of witches, he bequeathed me his remaining portion, and in his name I donated it to both an orphanage and fire house, which still hold his name on their front doors today. But through a mixture of grief and being intoxicated by giving, I accidentally included most of the wealth I had from that adventure in with the donations, and nearly ended up a pauper. The only thing that saved me was selling the shield that goes with this sword, for three hundred Groschen-'

"And they'll exclaim, 'Three hundred! I can't begin to afford that, not even if you offered it to me in payments!'

"But I'll tell them, 'No, I can't ask that much of a poor adventurer like you; I see myself in you too much to fall to such usury! Besides, the hilt has been replaced, and the blade nicked when an amateur sharpened it last summer. No, I can only ask, say, seventy?'

"And since seventy is so far below three hundred, even with those listed but undetected defects, they will be instantly sold on the prospect, if only to return to town with it and turn a profit themselves! And furthermore, since we bought the sword this morning for just twenty-four at a second hand shop, we can split the forty-six Groschen profit evenly," Soul finally finished. "You see? Even one good sale can make an entire day of waiting worthwhile, in this business."

"All right!" Black Star shouted, and Crona ducked in case anyone looked to see where it had come from.

'Forty-one divided three ways is...' Crona puzzled through it, and sighed. 'Is Soul trying to cheat us, or did he never learn arithmetic?'

"Keep keeping an eye on the path, Crona," Soul said, and reclined in the shade of the grotto. "Once someone desperate and half-rich comes by, be sure to say something."

Crona grunted an affirmation, and continued his watch. The sun beat overhead. Armsung sat between three dungeons, at the center of a triangle they formed, and adventurers never ceased in coming and going. Most dungeons, five an hour was busy; here, twenty an hour was regular. 'Soul won't have time to tell his whole lie,' Crona thought, 'before someone else comes along, and reports us.'

When he started, the sun kept his back warm; now it slowly bleached his hair, after Crona took off his helmet to cool down. He kept moving his hands every few minutes, as the rocks grew hot and slick with his sweat. Black Star snored in the grotto behind him. Even Ragnarok was silent, though Crona couldn't tell and didn't care whether he was asleep or still angry about earlier. As the world continued to heat, the number of adventurers slowed; the ones in town decided to stay in that day, and those already arrived stayed in the pleasant dankness of the dungeon rather than return through ten miles of sunny plains loaded with fifty pounds each of armor and weapons.

Birds ceased singing, and either flew elsewhere or spontaneously combusted in their nests and cooked the eggs. Soul stripped off his 'See, I'm an adventurer, too!' armor, but Crona kept his on, to keep from arising questions about the bloody cassock. The wind died down, then began to blow from the other side of the raised entrance of the dungeon, so the three received none of its cool benefits. In the distance, the horizon was a blurred, shaking mirage as heat peeled off the ground, and Crona took a deep gulp of the water after he confused a low cloud for an adventurer. So far as Crona could tell, it was the last cloud in existence.

Black Star jumped up, "My back! I'm being cooked!" He looked where he had laid and saw it was a large, flat stone, no longer in the shade. "Huh?" He looked up, and saw the sun was half through its daily rotation. "What the heck? It's been half a day! Why haven't we stopped someone yet, to take their money and run even, if they won't buy the stupid sword? We haven't eaten in almost a day!" His exclamations were almost incomprehensible, for while he said them Black Star rapidly stomped the ground like an angry rabbit.

Soul slowly sat up, "He's right, Crona. Hasn't anyone looked even halfway distraught?"

"It's not my fault only competent people come this way."

Soul drank the last of the water and stumbled to the rocks with numb legs and a light head. Crona moved aside and Soul glared at the horizon, and dared it to send them a mark. As though it felt pity or impatient, over the horizon came a sun-stricken adventurer, who made his way toward them.

Black Star passed out again while they waited for the adventurer's arrival. When he finally came near, half an hour later, Soul came out from behind the rocks to greet him. Crona recognized a more casual form of the clerk's business smile from the previous day as the mask Soul put on, once the light-haired adventurer was close enough to see him apart from the rocks.

"Are you taking on the dungeon, sir?" Soul asked. "I must warn you, fellow adventurer; there is a rampaging beast inside. Will your weapons and armor be enough?"

The worn-out adventurer looked down at his cheap but comfortable armor, and his lone weapon, a quiver of arrows and bow. "Why do you ask?"

"Just this; I am myself currently encumbered by being over-equipped, and would be most appreciative if you could buy a piece or two from me for a reasonable price."

'Reasonable for which one of you?' Crona wondered, and closed his eyes. 'Why all the fancy words? I'm so thirsty...'

"Merchants are forbidden from selling at dungeons. King Death declared it verboten," the adventurer said, and watched Soul for his reaction.

"I'm no merchant, I assure you! Just another adventurer, like yourself, who made a simple mistake and would rectify it as best I can. Surely Death won't mind such a small transaction?"

"I suppose he won't," the customer agreed. "Do you have a dagger?"

Soul smiled and went back to the grotto, coming back with a small bundle. "I have three; pick your favorite, while I explain their storied pasts-"

"That's unnecessary. I'll take this one," he said, and picked up the middle blade after barely glancing at them.

"Ah, that's a fine choice! I gained it when I was in the-"

"I don't care where you got it," he said. "Just tell me how much you want for it."

"Forgive my insistence, but its past greatly increases its value. As I was saying-"

"I'll give you eighteen Groschen for it, and not one more."

Soul sighed, and Crona tried to remember how much they bought it for that morning. 'Is that even a profit?'

"Fine, eighteen."

'I guess it is.'

The adventurer counted out as many coins, and Soul sighed again with regret at giving in so easily, as he saw how much their mark had with him. Despite that he did not push to make a second sale, and soon the adventurer rounded the corner and went inside the dungeon. "That was miserable," Soul said.

"This whole day is miserable," Crona replied.

They returned to waiting, but in only a few minutes an entire group appeared. Soul stood on the rocks in excitement, then his smile dropped as they came near. It was a group of King's Guildsmen, in full regalia, from the dungeon. At their head was the dark haired Guildsman from the day before, the one who revealed their scam with the potions. At his side, and in his proper, skull-emblazoned attire this time, was their only customer that day; the dagger man.

"You three again?"

"Now let's wait a minute, and cool our heads," Soul said, and gestured for them to stop, a sign they chose to ignore. "The law doesn't prohibit adventurers from selling things to other adventurers, right? So where I'm concerned, we're pretty far in the clear in this mat-"

The potion-crusher Guildsman punched him in the abdomen, and Soul fell to his knees as he clutched his gut. "Clay, get some rope." Their customer nodded and went back to the dungeon. "That's far too much merchandise sitting around for you to be considered anything but merchants. Not to mention, you identified yourselves as such yesterday."

"I'd rather forget about that," Soul gasped. "C'mon guys, what'll you gain from arresting us? Just take the weapons and armor, and we'll never return to Armsung. Use your head, and everyone wins."

The guildsman stroked his chin, and nodded. "Even if I don't trust your weapons, we could use some new armor."

"Right? Just take it."

The group went around the rocks and piled the goods onto stretches of fabric, and rolled the ends. Clay returned with the rope and called to the one who bashed the water drum, "Akane, here it is."

Two of the unnamed guildsmen used snippets of the rope to tie up the fabrics' ends. One of them commented, "I'm surprised you three got all this out here."

"It was cooler this morning," Crona offered.

"That sounds nice," Akane said, and turned to the others. "Alright, tie them up."

"Hey! Wait!" Black Star shouted as he woke up again, "We haven't done anything wrong! We're just advent-"

"We've already done that bit," Crona told him. "You were still asleep."

"Oh." Black Star thought while the Guildsmen approached with rope. "Oh, yeah! You can't arrest us!"

"Why not?" Akane and Clay asked synchronized.

"We gave you that stuff as a bribe, right? What criminals are going to trust Guildsmen to accept their bribes from now on, if you arrest us anyway?"

"We accept bribes all the time," Clay admitted. "That doesn't mean it has ever effected an outcome."

Soul jumped without warning and headbutted Clay beneath the chin, and extended a scythe blade at several others. "We're getting out of here, alright? Just be glad you got the armor."

The Guildsmen dropped the bundles and drew their weapons. Clay stumbled back until Akane grabbed him, and he transformed into Akane's claymore. Crona pulled the empty hilt from its sheath, but it was empty, and he shoved it back in before anyone thought too deeply about it.

Several swords came down and converged at a point, which Soul knocked away with his arm-blade, then jumped to Black Star, who grabbed the new-formed handle of a scythe. Black Star spun it around a few times, and got his arm cut as many times by the swords. A sword swung from below instead of above, and knocked the scythe from his hands. As the guildsmen cheered, a wide shadow pulled over the battle from above. Crona looked up to see what it was.

"Oh Death, WHAT IS THAT THING!?" Crona screamed, and pointed toward the dungeon. Akane noticed the shadow as Crona cried out, and dropped Clay as he fell, paralyzed by the endless possibilities of terror. The other guildsmen expected some sort of monster and turned to defend themselves. They saw a lonely cloud over the dungeon, in front of the sun. Akane turned back and saw the three as they ran off across the fields.

* * *

"I have a new plan," Soul announced over the din. Several more popular establishments had burned down earlier that evening, and the Afterlife swelled with transplanted revelers.

"Please forget it," Crona said. "I can only be attacked so many days in a row." He nursed a glass of sage water, and sulked.

"This one isn't illegal though," Soul said.

"Then where's the fun?" Black Star asked.

"It's legal, but that doesn't mean it's moral. You two game?"

'It's not like I have a choice,' Crona thought. 'How else can I get room and board?' From the increase in customers, Crona was already used to being jostled whenever someone walked past. He was seated, but his head laid on his folded arms on the table. Crona sighed, 'Ah, this sucks.'

"There's a festival throughout the kingdom tomorrow," Soul explained. "Death called for it. It's to celebrate the final extermination of witches. But you know, this place used to be the capital of a country allied with them; the witches, that is."

Crona's ears perked. "I thought everyone hated witches," he said from the table. "That's why Death had them all killed, isn't it?"

"Witches pretty much kept to themselves back when they had their own country," Soul explained. "Why should anyone have hated them? But when Death came up from the south and needed to justify taking such an expansive domain for himself, he villainized everyone who was already here. The ancestors of today's Disciples degraded themselves and accepted his reign, while witches fought back and put a target on themselves."

'There's so much about witches I don't know; now there's so much no one will ever know,' Crona thought. Melancholy from reality's transience fell over him.

"But I won't accept being considered second rate by people who shouldn't even be here," Soul continued. "Why should I? They should've stayed back south; why leave a warm sea? They're the ones who invaded this place, so if I take reparations for it, they can't complain."

"But what's the job?" Black Star asked. "Get back to that!"

"It's simple; a lot of people around here don't like adventurers, and vice versa. Now Death will celebrate the extinction of our ancient allies, and his people with him? No way there's not a riot. So we'll buy a bunch of weapons, and armor, and potions. When violence breaks out, we can sell to the locals. It'll be in town, so it's legal; we'll only need to fan a few flames."

Crona noticed a girl across the room talk to some adventurers, and wondered why she seemed familiar. After the adventurers shook their heads, she walked to another table and talked to them. 'I don't remember meeting her, so why-?' At a neighboring table, a merchant and guildsman chatted.

"She was at Patty's place too, until the fire."

"I remember, she was asking about a possessed priest. Said she was with the King's Guild, or somesuch."

"She is; I asked, and she showed me Death's mark. What's this about a priest?"

"Yeah, some story from a town east of here, I think. A priest with a devil's wings appeared to a congregation right before Walpurgisnacht, and cursed half the town to plague and the other half to damnation."

An adventurer leaned back in his chair until the front legs were off the floor, and his head nearly over the two's table. "Hey, I heard about that. They say he's a 'gift' to the King, from the dictator of that Duchy a few provinces over. You know, that Dark Lord."

"Mind your own business," the Guildsman grunted, and pushed the back of his chair until it was back to the ground.

'She was in the church!' Crona thought, and began to sweat. 'Will she recognize me? I'm dressed differently, but...' He sat up and hurriedly put on his helmet.

"What's with you-" Soul began to ask, when he saw Maka across the room. He put on his helmet, too.

"Did I miss a trend?" Black Star mimicked them, and put his on.

"Excuse me, sirs-" The old man who ran the place stopped, unsure, as he saw their helmets.

"Go ahead."

"Err, your tab, sir. It's getting quite high, don't you think?"

"How much is it?" Soul asked.

"Forty Groschen, just from the past two weeks. And that's without figuring what I should charge you for rent, but don't, despite you three sleeping here every night."

"I'll pay it within three days," Soul grumbled. "Let me know if it gets above fifty." His speech came out reverberated from the metal visor. The old man gave a nod and left them. "Unbelievable. I practically used to run this place, and now this?"

'When I first came here, it did feel like Soul owned the place, or was a big-time crime boss,' Crona thought. 'Did that change since yesterday? Or was it just my perception, and the situation stayed the same?'

Maka came near, and Crona turned his head away.

"Excuse me, have any of you three heard about the possessed priest from Brockton? Anything might help, even rumors."

"We haven't heard anything. Leave us alone, girl," Soul said in a stern voice.

Maka's smile turned into a glare, and she turned her nose up at them. "My bad," she said in a monotone voice, "I thought at least one of you three might be able to help. But it's something important, so if you wouldn't mind giving it a bit more thought-"

"I said we don't know anything. Buzz off."

"Of course, I should have known better than to second guess an experienced adventurer like yourself." She crossed her arms, "If either of you other two know anything, I'll be leaving soon, so make up your mind about telling me or not before then."

The adventurer who had leaned back earlier chuckled, and Maka kicked his chair when she walked away.

"Spiteful nag," Soul muttered. Crona stared at the bar, the opposite direction from Maka. "I should've deserted the Guild as soon as they paired us up."

'She didn't recognize me, did she?' Crona felt a pinch on the side of his head, and adjusted the helmet.

"Having marriage problems, kid?" The adventurer smirked as he asked Soul.

"Mind your own business," he was scolded again. "There's no way I would ever marry a girl that flat. Besides, we don't know each other."

"Oh, I'm sure. No, really, you've got me convinced." He began to laugh, and Soul stood up.

"You wanna' fight or something?"

"Oh man, this is priceless!" The adventurer kept laughing, then abruptly stopped. "Hey, wait; don't I know your voice?"

"We haven't met before, and I would've preferred if it had stayed that way."

"No, I'm positive... Wait a minute! You're the bastard who sold my friend watered down potions; he died!" The adventurer stood up with a hand on his sword. Maka was at the door, but turned at the outburst, and decided to stay a few minutes longer.

'If that Guildsman breaks things up,' she thought, 'I can bail out Soul and drag him back to the Guild; at least my trip to Armsung won't end as a total waste.'

"Someone call the guildsmen," was murmured through the building, and Crona moved a hand to the empty hilt. "Those guys ripped me off, too," quietly echoed after it, and Soul reached his arm toward Black Star.

"Soul, is there another way out of here?" Crona asked, as his shaking hand rattled the hilt against the sheath.

"There is, and even more people are between us and it than if we just use the front door."

"What's going on in here?" A voice called above the crowd, and the Afterlife stopped murmuring as Akane and Clay walked in. Akane saw the three and recognized their builds, even with their faces obscured by helmets. "You three, again? For the third time in two days? Really?"

"We didn't do anything this time," Soul said. "It's just a disatisfied customer, from yesterday."

"Ah, that's all?" Clay turned to go, and Crona sighed with deep relief before he turned back to them, "As if we'd do that! Did you forget you've evaded arrest twice already?" He put out his arm and became Akane's sword.

"Stay where you are until my comrades arrive, or be cut down."

"Why don't we just fight you while you're alone?" Black Star asked.

"Because the entire crowd is against us, idiot," Soul told him.

Crona put his hands to his visor, 'There's no way out of this. Ragnarok won't help me, Soul doesn't think we can win... What hope is there?' He looked up and covered his ears as a deafening sound came from the street.

Everyone in the Afterlife turned to the door, and stepped away from it. Explosions? Another fire? The earthquake-like sound lived up to its descriptor, as glasses tipped sideways or fell off tables and shattered into shards of wet, self-antisepticizing glass. So far as a noise that loud and overpowering could be said to come from a direction when the hearer is within fifty yards, it seemed to go from one side of the front wall to the other. It battered their ears for half a minute before it stopped.

"What was-"

In the alley outside, a pair of strong hands grabbed the front wall of the Afterlife and tore it from the structure, leaving an open entrance in its place. The vandal pivoted their body for momentum and tossed the wall away, revealing four silhouettes to the patrons.

"Where is that swindler from yesterday? The potion-pusher!" One of them shouted into the exposed bar. Three dozen arms pointed to the center of the room. "Hmph. A bunch of kids? What a pain," he said, and raised a knife as one of the silhouettes disappeared.

"Who are you people?" Akane demanded. "To wantonly destroy an entire wall-"

"Shaddup, shoe-shiner! We're the Party of Pain!" The one with the knife announced. "Since you people never do your jobs well enough, we do 'em for you! We cover ourselves in bandages, so we can carry out justice without your guild bothering us on our off hours! And right now, we're here for those three!"

The party charged in and the crowd moved to the sides and let them through. Akane stood his ground in a battle stance. He was knocked to the ground as they rushed past and ignored him on either side.

Black Star lifted Soul's scythe and swiped it at them. He sent one through a table but left himself open to an attack. Another party member kicked past him, and the rapid explosive sounds returned as a fast-moving blade on his feet cut through Black Star's helmet visor and exposed his eyes to the sparks and wind it created.

Maka saw it was too late to get involved, and stopped leaning against the wall and left through its missing brother.

The biggest and loudest party member stabbed at Crona with his knife, and Crona pulled out the hilt again. It felt heavy. He swung with closed eyes at the man's knife-wielding hand, and felt a reflex to push down. The tip of the sword planted into the wood floor, and Crona screamed at his attacker. The scream was echoed by the sword itself, as though reverberated through it. The shock of it stopped the man a moment, as the rippling sound waves loosened the bandages on his face, and gave them slack. In that gap of inaction, Black Star ducked beneath a kick and pushed his foe off balance, to extricate himself from his own battle, before he dashed between Crona and the man.

The scythe went up, and met the knife. The two blades glared at each other and strained as each pushed against the other, while their unlicensed maestros did the same. Both wielders scowled at length at the other's partially uncovered face, before, in unison, they stopped their strain and slowly pulled back their Disciples.

"You abandoned me in Monmouth!" Black Star accused.

"You ran away without telling anyone!" The bandaged man retorted.

"You two know each other?" Soul asked. "Great; revenge is even sweeter than-"

Black Star tossed the scythe and almost hit Crona with it, as the other man did the same with his knife, the Disciple transformed into a woman before she hit the ground. Black Star and the man leapt at each other.

'They're going to fight barehanded for their revenge!' Crona thought, and took another step back.

Within arm's reach, Black Star slapped the attacker on the back, laughed, and the same was done to him.

"Man, that was ages ago! Who're these guys? What's with this 'Fighting for Justice!' thing?" Still laughing, Black Star turned to Crona and Soul, "Don't worry, we're good- this is Sid, he taught me everything I know!"

"Couldn't have taken long," Soul muttered.

"Who are they? I could ask the same thing!" Sid slapped Black Star's back a few more times and tussled his hair, "You fell into a den of thieves, alright. I thought you'd find some honest work!"

"Don't be stupid, you know I'd get bored of that!"

"You're right, I do know!"

Crona stared at them laughing, unsure, and sheathed Ragnarok. 'I guess that's done,' he thought.

Akane stepped to Black Star, "Regardless of your prior relations, it is my duty to apprehend you three. If this so-called party of pain interferes," he said, and turned to Sid. His sentence was left unfinished as a punch sent him across the room and into the alley.

"Who cares about that? We have catching up to do, Kuroi Hoshi*2!"

"I changed my assassin name since back then; it's 'Black Star' now."

"Finally, a name that isn't gibberish!" Sid turned to Soul and Crona, "Ya' know, this kid once went through eight names in a month! We got to calling him 'Pipsqueak'; you've really shot up since then, haven't you!"

'Though he's still short,' Crona thought.

"Sid," the one who kicked Black Star said, "Are we dealing with these guys or not?"

"Sure we're dealing them: a round of drinks, and a hand of cards!" Sid pulled out a sagging pouch of coins, and winked at Soul, "Being the good guys can pay pretty well, too."

* * *

After an hour Crona's soul was shaken by the spontaneous celebration. In the commemoration of Black Star and Sid's reunion Crona saw the following scenes progress towards mindless joy.

Drinks began to flow immediately after Sid brought out the money. This sparked a Cambrian hour of 'fun and games'. That title came from the participants; Crona disagreed.

Arm wrestling. Knife throwing. Drinking games. Song and dance. Maestro-Disciple-Kobold, a chance game played with the hands. Five different tables saw gambles on cards.

With every passing minute drinks grew taller, stakes higher, cares lower, music louder, and the atmosphere more intensley euphoric. From twenty minutes in the guildsmen decided to ignore their crimes in favor of public opinion and joined the array of adventurers. The only few aside from Crona who ignored the atmosphere were several strangers gathered at the edge of the bar, and talked amongst themselves in hushed tones about the next day.

It was a happy and overdone evening, in short. Crona stood against a wall, watching from the sideline. Soul, Black Star, Sid, Naigus, Giriko, Free, Clay, Akane, on and on. Even the proprietor seemed to enjoy the evening, and perhaps thought Sid was paying enough for drinks that the front wall could be fixed within the week.

"Hey, let's get in on it, Crona!" Ragnarok said.

"I'm not sure I'll come out alive."

"That's the fun of it! The risk! The element of unknown!"

"I don't think that's for me, somehow."

"You know you're missing out, right kid? Ah, to be young and have youth wasted on me! Crona! You're wasting it in the wrong ways; don't you know that much?"

'At least he isn't sulking anymore,' Crona thought. A server walked by and handed him a drink as they passed, under an assumption anyone still conscious had not had enough alcohol. Crona swirled the glass in his hand and watched his curved reflection in it. 'Maybe I'm not around the right people? But, would the right people make something like this fun, or would we do something else? I wonder what they would be like.'

Ragnarok whined. "This is all your stupid body's fault. I bet if you weren't practicing verboten magic, I would've possessed you properly, instead of fusing halfway like this; then I could have a drink of that stuff!"

"Have some, then. I don't care," Crona said, and put the glass to his lips before he remembered why Ragnarok couldn't drink, and neither could he. He brought the glass down, touched his mouth with his hand, and pulled away a slip of paper. "What's this?" Crona read the list of items and prices, and saw it was the receipt from the alchemist he bought the potions from, for their first criminal plot. "Why'd you use that, instead of sealing my lips again?"

"A piece of paper over the mouth of a bottle keeps people from putting weird things into it," Ragnarok told him.

'So I'm a bottle? I don't know if he's insulting me or not.'

Soul looked up across the room from a hand of cards he lost, and noticed Crona. He got up and went over to him, "Planning to keep that on all night?" He tapped the side of his side.

Crona realized his helmet was still on and pulled it off. Soul's eyes widened. Panicked, Crona thought 'Is Ragnarok still out?'

Soul laughed.

"What the heck, dude? What's up with that?" He saw Crona's confusion, "Don't you know what you look like?"

Crona looked down into the glass again and saw a lock of his hair on his head's right side was fastened with light blue string, which acted as a makeshift hair clip. His lips straightened in annoyance, 'Ragnarok didn't stop sulking without getting payback first, I guess.' Crona sighed, 'I guess I deserve it retroactively, for almost drinking just now.'

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"Not really," Crona said.

"I'll see if the owner will let you sleep here one more night," Soul promised. "But, you should know, the gang's breaking up. Black Star wants to rejoin Sid's group, and since he and I just aren't on the same wavelength in battle, I can't object. He doesn't know how to use a scythe properly, so I guess it was inevitable. I'll try and find someone to replace him, but the odds aren't good; if I can't, we're both leaving tomorrow. I thought you should know."

Crona nodded, and Soul left.

"Eh? But they were our meal ticket! They paid for food, and covered rent with their own credit! Running into those two losers was the best thing that's happened to us since you opened my jar," Ragnarok said.

"I don't mind so much. Defrauding adventurers doesn't feel very good."

"Speak for yourself," Ragnarok pouted. He pulled his face back into Crona's earlobe as a member of the party of pain walked to them.

"You're Crona, right?" Sid asked. "Soul and Black Star were telling me about you. We didn't fight long, but your reflexes were sharp. How long have you been training as a swordsman?"

"About two days," Crona said. "Maybe three." He kept his head down, intimidated by Sid's height and girth.

"Really? Then you're either a genius or lucky. Either way, you should put yourself to better use than what you've been doing."

Crona nodded and didn't say anything, so Sid left.

"The air's really gotten thick in here," Ragnarok said after Crona had been staring into the glass for several minutes. "I expect a fish might swim by, any minute now."

Crona nodded again and put the glass on a table as he headed for the door. He neared it, and someone grabbed his arm. He turned to see Soul.

"Good news, Crona! I find another 'freelance' Maestro. We're going to set up shop at the next town over for a few weeks, and we already have a few jobs figured out; the least of them will pay more in a day than everything we've done here combined. We just need to fill that third slot again- You in?"

Crona stared at him several long seconds, then said, "No thanks."

* * *

Black Star stumbled upright out into the alley, leaning on Soul, and waved his free arm in the air. "I'm gonna' be the next pain-giving-giver... member," he said in loud, rapid bursts between low and drawn out stretches.

"Yeah, yeah, good job buddy." 'Man, he's drunk.' Soul looked around in the moonlight as he sought an intersecting alley, preferably little-used.

"Just wait, Soul; in a year or two, I'm gonna lead those do-gooders into our case... Cares..."

"Cause."

"Into our cause- And then! We're gonna' take down Death, and all that, and be a free stat..."

"State."

"And I'll build a big castle, with a big yard and a forested garden to train in, with a waterfull in it, and I'm gonna teach the next generation how to be assassinators!"

"Right, yeah, good job buddy, just a few more steps."

"Where are we going to, ol' Soul ol' pal-" Black Star put a hand over his mouth, and his eyes bulged.

'Man, he's drunk.'

Black Star ducked his head into the side alley and retched while Soul rubbed his back. 'I wonder how old he is,' Soul thought. 'Oh well, he'll be Sid's problem again, from tomorrow.'

A few minutes later Soul brought Black Star back to Sid, and left out again. He jammed his hands in his pockets, and looked up at the night sky. 'A Maestro flaking in under an hour... Is that a new record? Easy come, I-didn't-see-him-go.' He sighed, then whistled an ode to the moonshine. 'What now? Look for a third Maestro? Try to go it along, solo? Even that would be better than crawling back to the Guild.'

"Soul."

Dragged out of his thoughts, Soul turned around and saw Maka. She stood in the shadow of two stacked crates.

'Damn.'

"Is this what you left the Guild for?" She asked. "To gamble, steal, drink, and live as a fugitive? Were those ideas so appealing you abandoned the Guild to pursue them?"

"Buzz off."

Soul quickened his pace, but Maka walked just a few steps behind him.

"It's already been three weeks since you deserted. Haven't you had your fill of law-breaking? Aren't you tired of being on the run? Just come back; you'll receive some discipline, but after a few weeks-"

"I don't know why you think I left because I wanted to break the law," Soul said without looking back. "I didn't leave because something pulled me away from the Guild; I left because something pushed me from it. I'll let you guess what it was. You're supposed to be smart, so it shouldn't take long." He stuck up an arm as a lazy wave. "Just leave me alone already. I've had enough."

Maka watched him walk a few steps, then clenched a fist and reached a resolve. "I'm looking for someone-"

"A new partner, I hope."

"A priest, from Brockton. A possessed priest. Or maybe a demon-"

"I already told you an hour ago I don't know anything about it. Why don't you-"

"The only reliable rumors I could find are that he destroyed a slime colony the next day, and went in the direction of Armsung afterward. Think, Soul. You've been here almost a month; has anyone like that shown up here in the past day or two? It's import-"

"Listen up, Maka!" Soul turned around. "I'm not on a ledge; you can't talk me down off of it." He pointed at her, "I'm leaving: the Guild, Armsung... I'll leave Death's damned domain if it means getting away!"

"That's not what I-" Maka stopped and watched Soul go until he faded with the shadows. She hit her fist against the wall.

* * *

Crona took one of the few unused chairs and placed it next to the open wall, and sat on it. 'I suppose I'll stay here to get some sleep, if this crowd ever leaves.' Semi-fresh air vented in from the alley with a gust of wind, and the laughing moon was visible from his seat. Crona leaned back against the wall and sighed, but for once, it was a sign of relaxation. "Ragnarok, do you sleep?"

"How would I know? I wouldn't be awake to tell."

Crona straightened his posture and watched the party continue to play out. It eventually lost steam after several more hours, but went on despite that. He was almost asleep when someone bumped into him. Crona looked up and saw a young woman with long black hair looking back down at him.

"Sorry; my bad," she said, and went in. Nothing better to do, Crona watched as she stepped between tables and squeezed between chairs, with occasional expressions of disapproval at the festivities. She reached the bar. The old man let her behind it. She held a sheet of parchment over a wooden board, and hammered a nail into it. Crona grew flustered and pretended to study the ceiling as she came back the same way and left.

"At least one person agrees with you about this party," Ragnarok said.

Crona got up and walked to the bar to read the message. The text was written too small to be legible from more than arm's length. "What is that?"

The owner looked up from pointlessly cleaning a glass, "That? It's just a job listing; the whole board's full of them."

"Can I see them?"

The barkeep nodded, and pulled it down for Crona to read.

* * *

*1 - youareanidiotCrona! / Cronayouidiot!

*2 - Black Star


	4. A Violent Vocation, Part One

Hungry.

The Twenty-ninth ran over abandoned fields of wheat and pressed deep tracks into the ground, sending up a low cloud of dust.

Starving.

A few meters to their flank, the Eighteenth ran alongside them. Both their arms fluttered behind them, pushed back by the resisting air.

Famished.

After traveling twenty leagues, impatient with waiting, both Twenty-nine and Eighteen stopped abruptly at the edge of a short cliff. Their loose arms whipped forward from momentum and pointed to a distant dust cloud, higher than their own, kicked up by a mercantile caravan. They looked at each other, smiling, and stepped off the edge.

As they continued their sprint across the countryside, the noon-rest bell clanged within the caravan; lunch was served.

* * *

Two things shocked Crona each day at noon. His new employer, the merchant's guild managing the caravan, not only promised to pay him after every leg of the trip, but gave Crona more food than he thought he could possibly eat. The second shock was when he did eat all of it, his appetite whetted by labors, and was able to repeat that display of deserved gluttony at suppertime as well.

Crona sat next to his superior, an experienced swordsman whom Crona had never seen wear armor. The two ate in silence until the bell rang again; this time it did not cease, but continued to peal. The swordsman stood up, "Put on your helmet."

The merchant's guild had offered to outfit Crona with completely new armor and weaponry, but he kept his old sheath and helmet, accepting only armor for his torso and limbs to replace the patchwork suit he assembled outside Armsung half a week ago. He put on that familiar helmet, Ragnarok's roost, and followed his superior to the sentry's post.

"Do you see them there?" The sentry, a stern woman in black clothes, pointed away from the beaten road, and Crona squinted. "Should I get the head merchant?"

Two people were running toward them... 'People?'

"No. Crona, come this way."

Crona did as he was told again, a hand at his hilt. "Um, this is the first time I've been needed; do you want me as vanguard or back-up?"

"Neither, just watch. It's only two this time; you can start to earn your wages later."

Crona nodded, but felt nervous as he looked at the swordsman before him. 'He doesn't even have a breastplate or gauntlets. Will he really be okay?'

"If he doesn't want us to work, don't try and change his mind, Crona!" With the helmet on, Ragnarok was licensed to speak. "And you haven't been saving enough food from meals for me! How do you expect to work as this group's armed escort if you don't keep your weapon satisfied?"

Crona ignored him as they walked out of the circle of wagons and glanced back. Most of the merchants and laborers broke from their meals and cheered the two on, "You get 'em, Mifune!" "Don't let those bandits get near us!" "Who's the scrawny kid?" Crona's eye caught that of a certain other, and he whipped his head back to Mifune, trembling.

Watching from the boundary of the noon camp, Maka wondered why he did that.

Mifune lent none of his attention to the spectating merchants as he stopped and faced the two approaching figures. His hand on the sheath, Mifune's thumb waited like a trigger finger.

Crona stopped ten paces behind him, and as he watched the two runners thought, 'I didn't know people could run that fast.' As the distance closed and they grew larger, Crona felt disoriented from the sight.

The two were grotesque, body proportions incorrect, and the merchants stopped cheering. One had an enlarged head; Twenty-nine was a few bounds ahead of his shrunken-headed companion, Eighteen. Their bizarre masks revealed their true nature as they came nearer still, and it was face paint on misshapen flesh. Eighteen's heavy, uncontrolled arms came to rest at his sides as he slowed down, but Twenty-nine kept his sprinting pace until he stopped a palm's width from Mifune and let his arms fly forward on either side of the guard. Both of them were smiling.

"Hey, let us eat them-"

Mifune's trigger-thumb shot up and his blade came out.

Crona stepped back as Twenty-nine's two heavy arms were cut off. Twenty-nine stumbled back, too. He looked down at his elbows, nothing below them, then back up at Mifune. The blade returned and cut halfway through their shoulder, where it lodged in the bone without passing through muscle. Twenty-nine took a step in to keep Mifune from pulling it out before he spun with his whole weight and snapped the curved blade in two.

"Hey, why not let us eat them?"

Crona screamed as his field of view was filled by Eighteen's unusual face, and he pulled out Ragnarok. Crona brought the sword down, but it cut through air as Eighteen had already stepped behind him. Shouts came from the caravan; worry, concern, and fear, progressing through that neighborhood of the emotional spectrum.

Eighteen picked him up by the arm. "You aren't strong, are you? He told us not to bother with weaklings." Crona flailed the sword at him, but couldn't lift Ragnarok with only one hand. Eighteen grabbed the blade to inspect it, "This shouldn't be so heavy, just like our-"

Eighteen froze, and despite their unchanging face they gave an impression of shock. Crona felt Ragnarok grow lighter, and pulled the sword down and out from Eighteen's grasp, and plunged it through his torso. The large, sharp hand released its grip, and both of them fell to the ground. Crona landed on his side but rushed to turn himself over, to see Mifune.

Twenty-nine escaped him, and ran disarmed to the caravan. He knocked two wagons on their sides, and stood unimperiled as he towered over the sentry. She had scarce time to comprehend her situation when a blade drove through his neck like an arrow. Twenty-nine turned to see where it came from, and collapsed. At the circle's perimeter stood Mifune, holding a quiver of swords.

Crona sighed, and began to pick himself up when a hand extended to help him. He took it. "Thanks," he said, and looked up. At the sight of his helper's green cravat, he stopped.

"What's the matter?" Maka asked, "Were you wounded?"

"...No! I'm fine, that is I think I am... Yes, I'm fine!" Crona stood up and pushed Ragnarok back into the sheath, 'I managed to avoid her for a few days, but I guess this is the end.' He wondered whether Maka would attempt to exorcise him then and there before he remembered, 'Right, she can't recognize me with my helmet on!'

"Shouldn't you take your helmet off, since the fight's over?"

Crona cursed in his mind while Ragnarok cackled quietly. He took a calming breath. 'I'm sure we'll run into each a few more times as long as we're both in the caravan, so I'd best find out now whether it worked.' Crona nodded, and put his hands to his helmet.

He lifted it off, and strove to keep his expression from revealing anything. The wind gently blew his hair, dyed gold in Armsung and tied in the back with blue string.

"Glad you're okay, then." Maka turned, and Crona sighed with relief; his disguise was a success. "Where did he go?"

"Who went?" Crona asked.

"The one you fought," Maka said. Crona looked around and realized the enemy was gone. 'Wasn't he downed?' Looking to the camp Crona saw Mifune and the sentry, but no defeated foe.

The bell pealed again, and the head merchant, a large man in the attire of a clerk, put his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice. "OOOIII! Alright everybody, we've got to get moving again if we're going to stay on schedule! Don't forget that some wares are perishable; we can't afford delays!"

Crona and Maka jogged back to the caravan, some wagons already loaded with cookware, and a group of laborers pushed upright the pair of upset wagons. Maka turned and waved as she went to a certain wagon, leaving Crona to walk to the one he shared with Mifune at the rear of the train.

"Your ploy worked, eh Crona? Now you can dramatically make her swoon before revealing the truth; that's the plan, right? That had better be the plan!"

"It's not," Crona told Ragnarok. "All I want is to not be exorcised, and her to leave. Maybe then I can relax-"

"The world's biggest failure of a Blutmeister living a peaceful, relaxing life? Don't go wishing for impossible things."

A person stood next to their wagon, and Crona recognized him as the head merchant. "Oh, er, hello, sir."

"Good job dealing with that person, or whatever it was," he said, and nodded in approval. "Though, it made me a bit anxious to see you needed help from a passenger."

'Help?' "Thank you, sir." Crona bowed, and wondered if there was another reason for the conversation beyond congratulations. "Um, are you talking about the girl that helped me up? Since the fight was already over-"

"Hmm? No, before that. She went out and hit him on the back before he dropped you to the ground. You didn't realize?"

Crona shook his head. "So she's a passenger. I haven't seen any adventurers and assumed the caravan didn't take on travelers, so I thought she might be with one of the merchants." Maka being a merchant's guest was the only explanation Crona thought of, after he first noticed her presence there during a meal-time break the day before.

"We usually don't, but she had the King's emblem and asked politely. Since her destination is our next stop, it seemed easy enough; not to mention, the Guild's rep had a wagon all to her lonesome, so I figured she could use some company."

Crona had a vague recollection of meeting the representative, an eyepatched woman with yellow hair and a black stone skull hanging down from her neck. After asking several people he failed to understand what her job was in the caravan, and gave up trying to learn.

The head merchant noticed his silence of memory, and bumped a fist against Crona's chest. "Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that; you don't have a crush on her or anything, right?" He laughed at the tease, assuming they were friends and thus Crona would fluster.

"No, we don't really know each other," Crona said, looking away. "I was just curious about the caravan picking up a traveler, is all."

The merchant looked surprised, but soon regained his bravado. "That so? Well, any time you want to know our policies on passengers or anything else, just ask where Joe is."

"Who's Joe?"

The merchant pointed to himself.

Crona nodded, and climbed into his wagon; the front of the caravan was already moving.

* * *

Maka sat with her feet hanging off the back of a wagon, watching the fields scroll past. She pulled them up at hearing her name and turned around to face inside, cross-legged. "What did you say?"

"Sorry, I didn't realize you were thinking-"

"Don't worry about it, I was just killing time."

Marie Mjolnir nodded, "I wanted to know about your reasons for going to Monmouth. After two days, I thought it was time I ask. That's an odd destination for a Discipleless Maestro, isn't it?"

"It's for my final exam," Maka said. "I'm searching for a demon-possessed priest. Most of the rumors I've heard so far point to them being from Monmouth, and having a connection to the Duke. My partner deserted the guild, so I'll exorcise that priest on my own to make my debut as a Maestro."

Marie smiled, "Your partner, huh? That takes me back..." After basking in memories a few moments Marie realized Maka expected a continuation of what she began saying. "Err, from before this was my role in the Guild."

"What exactly is your role right now?" Maka asked.

"It's a little complicated; I'm meant to act as judge, and ensure all dealings the merchants here engage in are fair and legal. That's what this post usually entails; ah, there are sometimes outlier cases, but that doesn't mean this is one..." Marie trailed off as she thought of a more concise explanation. "I suppose I'm an arbiter."

"But you used to be a regular Maestro, right?" Maka asked, eyes shining. "How was it? Did you travel much? Who was your Disciple? Were you ever on a foreign mission?"

Marie adjusted the cushion she sat on and wondered how the topic turned to this. "Mhm, there was a lot of travel, though I don't know if it's still like that. As for my partner," Marie paused with a reminiscing gaze, "he was a nice man, whom I haven't seen in a long, long time."

Maka saw she had stirred sad memories, and determined not to break the silence as an odd apology. Marie stared into space with a smile for several minutes, before she asked, "Did you have other questions? Foreign service, was it? Let's see; I went to some faraway islands, but nothing too exciting happened there."

Maka nodded and looked down at her legs. "Did you, lose anybody? Back then?"

Marie held her bittersweet smile and nodded back. "Yes. Many people I cared for; but, not so many as I first thought. Maka," she said, "I'm sure you'll retire one day with more friends by your side than those who can't be. Definitely."

Maka nodded again, still staring down. Marie looked at her and, reminded of her past, lay down. "It's still early, but we won't pass any trading posts today so the merchants won't need me. If you sleep now, I'll help you train tonight."

* * *

Crona waited in squirmish silence while Mifune sat thinking. 'Is he mad I fought after he told me to only observe?'

The two were in their caboose wagon, positioned so the sentry only needed to watch the sides, with Joe at the front. It was divided by a short wall halfway through, giving Mifune's space in the back privacy while Crona slept in the half in front of it with the open doorway. Mifune sat with him in the front, his back against the wall, watching scenery through the doorway.

Mifune finally spoke, and Crona flinched. "Your sword handling is amateur, but you might have a bit of talent. With knowledge and experience, you might grow to competence. Until then, don't trust in your abilities to protect anything important to you."

Crona nodded.

"How long do you plan to work for this caravan?"

"I hadn't considered it much. Until I find something better, I-"

"Better in what ways?"

Crona tried to answer, but had none. He shrugged.

"I will teach you."

Crona nodded again.

* * *

Beneath the night sky, encircled by wagons, and lit by a bonfire, Crona practiced his sword swinging and worried about injuring his shoulder from repetition. Across the fire from him and Mifune, Maka defended herself against Marie's pulled punches.

"Shouldn't I be training my offense?" Maka asked between jabs, and leaned her head as a new one came.

"Not before you learn proper defense," Marie said. "A Maestro without a Disciple is an easy target without this type of training. I won't be able to relax unless you can handle yourself in a fight when we reach Monmouth."

'I thought I already could,' Maka thought as she ducked from a near hit.

Crona's attention wavered as the tedious swings began to come from muscle memory, and his mind wandered to Maka. 'What if the dramatic light from the fire reminds her? She probably can't see my hair color right now; will my isolated face make her realize?'

"Focus, Crona." Mifune stood to the side and watched with strict attention. Each swing, almost identical to the next and former, received the same exacting inspection. After fifteen further repetitions he said, "That's enough of the downswing. Hold it in your left hand and strike forward in a lunge, your right hand pressed against your back."

Crona expected to strain himself holding Ragnarok in just his left hand, but saw by firelight the blade had shrunk in diameter. It was changed to a rapier in the battle that morning. 'Ah, that's why I was able to pull it from his grasp.' In his mind he begrudgingly admired Ragnarok's skill as a sword, compared to his own as a swordsman.

Stepping back after each repetition and lunge was the added phase Crona needed to keep his mind on his training.

One of Marie's jabs landed, connecting with Maka's shoulder. The punch was pulled, but still had enough force to knock Maka back a step. "Are you distracted?" Marie asked. "If you want, we can train outside the caravan."

Maka shook her head, "No, I'll sometimes need to fight under distracting circumstances, I'm sure. Let's keep going." Marie smiled and replied with further strikes.

After thirty lunges, Mifune motioned for Crona to stop. "You aren't putting thought into your swings, are you?"

"Is there much to think about?" Crona asked.

Mifune flashed a look, and Crona wondered whether he glared or if it was just the lighting. "Ten thousand swings won't improve anything but strength if you fail to think about them. The force, the angle, the speed, the way you hold the hilt in your hand. It's from minorly adjusting these things ten thousand times you begin to grasp enough to be called a beginner.

"Imagine an enemy with a sword; he swings mechanically the same way ten times, then assumes a new swing. Fight until he's shown you ten styles."

"But he doesn't exist; what am I supposed to fight?" Crona asked. Mifune certainly glared at him then, and Crona faced the empty air in front of him as Mifune turned to take a seat.

He closed his eyes and remembered Akane, the guildsman from Armsung. Crona opened his eyes and imagined Akane stood before him, pulling out his Disciple's sword. 'A rapier against a claymore?' As he thought the question his hands sagged with weight, as Ragnarok took advantage of the low light and Mifune's turned back to return to his regular form, a broadsword of incomparable style. 'Good, now we're equals.'

Crona fought the spectral vision for fifty swings before he paused. Another twenty swings, and he stopped. "I can't picture any more styles," he panted.

"Go get some water," Mifune said. "When you come back, I will demonstrate twenty swings; you'll learn them all."

Crona left the bonfire's light for a water well caravans often used as a stopping point for the night, passing behind Marie. Maka noticed him and her eyes followed for two steps before she was knocked to the ground by a hit to her forearm. Marie helped her up.

"How did you keep the battle in focus, when you were a Maestro?" Maka asked as she wiped dirt from her shirt.

"Staying focused wasn't really a problem, since I always had my partner to cover blind spots," Marie said. "When you go it alone, it's different; fighting solo has a few advantages, but the downsides are heavy."

"I didn't make the decision to split," Maka said. "Fighting with a scythe-type Disciple was much easier than this kind of hand-to-hand, but he left. Until Head Maestro Stein finds a replacement for him, this is my only option."

"Did you talk with him, and find out why he was leaving?" Marie asked. "Maybe you two can work through it."

"I tried to when we met later, a few days ago," Maka told her, and pouted. "He left because he hates me. There's nothing I can do about that."

"I'm sure he didn't mean-"

"Soul's never held a grudge an entire month before. If he didn't mean it, he wouldn't have said it," Maka said. "I've already extended an olive branch twice now; when he was acting strangely a little while before he left, and in Armsung. He's not my problem any-"

"Either way, he's your partner," Marie said. "I don't know what happened between you two, but try to see his side of things, without forgetting your own. Because sooner or later he'll want to see his partner, too."

Maka saw Crona return with a pitcher of water, and envied his apparent life of earnest training, and the lack of difficulties beyond his own limits which came with it.

Crona's mind was not occupied just then by his growing regret of not having chosen a different job in Armsung, or by the active scenario wherein he was a fugitive being chased by a girl traveling in the same mercantile caravan as him. He just wanted to know whether Mifune would let him sleep late tomorrow.

* * *

The next evening, Crona trained again after supper. Mifune had not let him sleep late. Crona yawned as Mifune told him they would not sleep until he had trained in all twenty styles Mifune demonstrated the previous night. They were still on the third when Maka and Marie resumed training as well.

"Don't they have to work during the day?" Maka asked. Tonight she was being tested and taught kicks; how to receive them, and how to give.

"The bodyguards must have a rough time of it," Marie agreed. "The merchants and their wares are potentially at risk all hours of the day, so I'm not sure when they sleep."

Against the harmless apparition of Akane, Crona satisfied Mifune's standards with the fourth style, "For a beginner." They moved on to the fifth, and with it, Mifune gave Crona a warning.

"Never fight like a berserker, Crona," Mifune said. "That style is only useful against a fighter with overwhelming strength, and it wastes energy. Only give in to instinct if you're certain to perish otherwise; though, if you reach that point, the outcome is unlikely to change."

Maka threw her total weight into a kick. Marie caught it and let go of her foot, so Maka wouldn't fall.

"You shouldn't put everything into one attack unless it's sure to land," Marie said. Maka nodded and tried again, turning mid-kick to lead with her elbow instead.

Crona's imaginary sparring partner landed an imaginary hit. 'I could have side-stepped that, so it doesn't really count,' he thought. Mifune's gaze passed through him, and left a chill in its wake. 'But I didn't, so it counts after all.' Crona thrust and swung for ten minutes before Mifune nodded and said he could take a break, waving toward the well, forty kilometers from the previous night's well. Crona took the pitcher and went.

Maka noticed and ignored him to put all her effort and thought into the next kick. It fell short as Marie stepped back. Maka shifted her weight to her extended foot and pushed it against the ground to propel herself forward, her forearms crossed, changing the kick to a charge. Marie stepped to the side and smiled as she put a hand on Maka's shoulder, bringing her to rest.

"Good job, Maka. Being able to change one attack to another as the situation shifts is an important ability. You managed to form an attack while also defending yourself; I can't even fault you for being reckless. You were only open when you vaulted forward, and no sane fighter will go for the legs when an attack is coming from above."

Maka nodded and began to thank her before turning away. "I didn't read the situation," she admitted. "I thought you would back up, so I planned for it. There wasn't any fast thinking involved."

"Predicting an opponent's movement is just as important," Marie said. "We can work on your improvisation later. The bodyguards look to be making tea, so let's rest a moment and join them."

"Eh? But what if they want to be left alone-"

"Don't worry, they probably assumed we'd train again after last night, but didn't go elsewhere for their own session. Hello!"

Mifune and Crona looked up and saw Marie waving, while Maka walked behind her. "Have you two finished already?"

"Not quite, just taking a little break. Mind if we join you?" Marie revealed a bag of bread and cheeses, and Mifune motioned at some log seats opposite them, across the bonfire.

Crona stared into the fire and hoped their mutual rest would be short. Through the flames Maka watched him, glancing aside every few moments so he wouldn't notice. Marie passed around the bag and each took some. The crackling fire staved off silence.

"So, have you two been training together long?" Marie asked when it grew unbearable not to speak.

Crona waited for Mifune to answer, but a glance revealed his lack of intention to do so. "Ah, only since yesterday," Crona told her. "Mifune is teaching me so I can be more help."

"That's kind of him," Marie said. She looked at Mifune, his eyes closed and arms crossed, then leaned toward Crona, "Hey, is he asleep?"

Maka tugged her sleeve, "Marie, please!"

"I, I don't think so," Crona said, tilting away. "Mifune keeps to himself around me, when it isn't about work."

Marie leaned back, "I wonder if that's how it should be. Teachers withholding secrets from their students is only natural, but he might be going a bit far. Oh, but Maka," she said, turning to her own student, "I'd prefer if you didn't keep things from me. Secrets make it harder to teach, even if you can learn fine while keeping them."

'So teachers can keep secrets while students can't?' Crona wondered, 'Then, is graduation when they get revealed?'

"I would prefer you not fill Crona's head with irrelevant theories." All three turned to Mifune, whose eyes were still closed.

"I'm sorry," Marie said, earnestly. "I don't intend to undermine your authority as his mentor. If I'd thought you wouldn't agree, I'd have waited until we left to speak about it."

"I don't disagree," Mifune told her, "I said it was irrelevant. The relationship between teacher and student has nothing to do with us; ours is an elder comrade teaching a junior comrade. It's much simpler than teacher and student. Secrets can not exist in a relationship like that."

Crona slouched. 'It's not like I can tell him everything, or anything really, but hearing that doesn't make things any easier.' The pleasant radiating heat of the flames transformed into a sweltering, uncomfortable experience as guilt shaped his senses.

Marie said, "That's a good philosophy to have, openness between comrades."

"I have another," Mifune said. "Remember it, Crona. 'Power is only worth what you protect with it.'"

"Does that mean you can only be powerful if you're protecting something important?" Crona asked, "Or maybe, 'Power is meaningless without a reason,' or even 'Power is meaningless without reason'?"

"Draw your own conclusion."

"Whichever it means," Marie interjected, "it seems sound."

Maka stood up, "Marie, can we keep training? I want your blessing to fight on my own by the time we reach Monmouth, and there's only a few days left."

Crona laid his head on the ground and sighed as Marie waved goodbye and the two returned to their practice, twenty meters away. Mifune was silent again, and Crona wondered whether he was thinking or resting. Overhead the stars blanketed the sky down to the panoramic horizon, and Crona felt lost in them when Mifune stood up next to him, "Let's get back to work. You still don't have enough power to protect anything."

* * *

Crona returned from patrolling the noon camp's perimeter and dropped on a seat to eat lunch. Two nights of little rest were taking their toll, though without any raids by bandits the consequences were deemed acceptable. Stew; he ate it mechanically, and hoped no one heard the squabble he and Ragnarok fought a few minutes earlier.

After the attack several days before, the two bodyguards ate meals in shifts, one eating while the other patrolled. Crona ate sitting between two laborers working for the merchants, loading and unloading cargo at trading posts and driving the horses back and forth to said posts, and setting up camps at noon and night, and packing things away when the caravan was ready to move again. The two knew each other, and Crona sat as low as he could to keep out of the way of their chatter.

"That new sentry's been awfully busy the past few days," one of them noted. He was wider than the other.

"I noticed that too! Last night I woke long after everyone was asleep, except the bodyguards, and when I went for water she was there at her post! Day and night; doesn't she ever sleep?" He was taller.

"Those bodyguards don't seem to either," Wider agreed.

"She noticed those strange bandits the other day from pretty far away, so at least she's good at her job. Remember that time last summer? That sentry, what was his name... Ax? Something like that; remember how he broke his spectacles, and couldn't even see a full city only a mile away?"

They laughed, while Crona fought a subdued fight with the tiny arms and face coming out from his hand to eat his bread crusts.

"Joe fired that punk then and there-"

"I was there too, you don't need to give the whole history of the thing."

Taller shrugged. "I don't know where he found this new one, but she's definitely the best we've had in years."

"Right, I just wish she hadn't come as a package deal," Wider complained. Taller asked what he meant. "Well, he hired her a month ago, right? Well, the day Joe hired that sentry was the same day he let that new merchant, Justin, join the caravan."

"Not that flea," Taller grumbled.

"Who needs that many wagons? He practically doubled our length; that guy's slowing down the whole caravan, and won't even talk with anyone but Joe and the Guild's rep. Even his workers keep among themselves! Priests should just leave mercantile adventures to merchants, y'know?" Wider slammed his empty bowl on the crate they used for a table, "And you know what? That guy's the reason we left Armsung the day before the witch festival! We could have stayed a day or two and enjoyed ourselves; that kind of thing only happens once a generation! But for some reason, Joe let him force us out early."

Crona finished eating, having lost the battle to Ragnarok, and got up.

* * *

"I won't be able to teach you much tonight," Marie told Maka in advance. "It's going to rain before long."

"We should reach Monmouth before noon, the day after tomorrow," Maka said, "so I want to train as long as we can, before the rain starts." Marie nodded, and Maka took a defensive stance.

Marie stepped forward and punched. Maka caught it and winced at her stinging palm. She said nothing of it.

By the end of the hour Maka realized Crona and Mifune never began their training, and was caught off guard by a punch coming at her from the side. Her eyes turned and saw Marie's fist. Maka ducked reflexively and stepped behind Marie as momentum from the punch brought her forward. Adrenaline coursed, and instincts reigned. Maka put an open hand on Marie's back, near her shoulder blade.

For a moment, the stinging in her palm was numbed.

Marie's eyes widened in shock as she fell forward and landed on the ground on her hands and knees. Her black skull necklace flew out from beneath her collar and dangled above the ground. After a moment frozen in shock, Maka rushed to help her up, as Marie realized her body was trembling. Neither said anything until she was on her feet again, holding her arm. Then Maka stood before her and bowed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"What-"

"Maestro Stein told me never to do that unless I was in a serious situation, but I got caught up in our training and lost my head and perspective, I think. I'm sorry. We should stop."

Marie looked at her student, still bowed in apology. "Stein taught you that?"

"For exorcisms and fatal combat, because I was ahead of the others. I'm not sure anymore that he should have. I'm sorry, Marie."

Maka's voice began to choke, and at a word she looked up; Marie saw tears in her eyes and hugged her. "It's alright, I'm fine, Maka. It was only an accident. I was mostly surprised, that's all. You've apologized enough already."

Her head over Marie's shoulder, Maka nodded, and swallowed. "I'm... Thank you, Marie." Maka relaxed as Marie stroked her head, then pulled away and wiped her face in her sleeve. "I'm glad you're alright."

Marie put on a smile, "Just be sure not to do that again, or I'll get angry. And if you see Soul again," she hesitated but went on, "you should try again to reconcile. I don't want you to grow used to doing that, and there's a limit to how far you can go on your own." She felt something on her nose, and held out a hand. "The rain's beginning; we should go back now."

Maka shook her head, "I'd like to stay out a little longer, to think. The rain's not heavy and the fire will keep me dry. You should head back to the wagon though."

"I think I will. Be sure to stay in the camp! It's dark from the clouds, so if you fall down a muddy slope we won't be able to find you until morning."

Maka watched Marie walk away from the fire and grow dark. She took a seat there, on the edge of its sphere of warmth, and hugged her knees as she stared pensively into the flames.

As she walked to their wagon Marie Mjolnir tightened the grip on her left arm, and felt her body shake with a chill. "When did you grow so careless, Stein? How could you have thought Maka would be ready to manipulate wavelengths at her age, when the world is like this? Maybe after she's a Maestro, and after two or three years instead of the usual ten... But not now, and not without proper training, Stein!" Marie let go of her arm to grab her skull necklace and her knuckles whitened before she loosened her grip a minute later. "She doesn't even have a partner right now, and you're letting her travel alone, full of half truths?"

* * *

"You can rest tonight, Crona. It's going to rain, and training every night will strain your body." Mifune walked past Crona and put out a hand to lift the curtain guarding his room in the back. "Enjoy the rest, but don't grow used to it."

After half an hour Crona tapped on the dividing wall and Mifune came to the curtain. "I'm going out on patrol," he said.

"Can't sleep?"

Crona nodded, "I thought I would want to, after the past few nights, but... I grew used to it."

Mifune nodded, "Why patrol?"

"I heard some sounds in the rain-"

"What kind of sound?"

"Just a lot of footsteps, I think," Crona told him. "Once or twice I thought I heard a laugh, but it cut off before I could focus on it."

Mifune nodded and the curtain fell back, and Crona went out into the rain. He walked around the caravan and gave a cursory inspection of its edge as the rain hardened and Ragnarok complained, until Crona was satisfied he only heard a few merchants or workers. 'Maybe this air will help me get to sleep,' he thought, and cut across the open ground of the camp to return to his wagon. As he passed the bonfire, lit as always in the camp's center, Crona froze as he felt eyes on him. He turned his head and saw Maka across the fire pit, sat on damp ground, hugging her knees and looking at him the same way Blair once had on an occasion when she suspected him of some minor misdeed.

The unexpected memory of the one who sold out the coven tempered his anxiety with annoyance, and since that annoyance was not directed at Maka, he felt calm and stood upright. "It's pouring," he said. "Shouldn't you get to your wagon?" Maka shrugged, and turned her face.

Crona considered she was chasing him, and considered she was obviously upset by something. He frowned at his own conclusion before going to the bonfire's fuel wagon. He dragged a few logs to the fire, and cleared enough room in the wagon to sit. The rain pattered on the canvas coverings above and to the windward side. He reclined with his head on a dry log, staring up. After a few minutes Maka slowly climbed in, and mimicked his repose. Somewhere in the storm they heard a high laugh of joy play out unobstructed.

"Are you okay?" Crona asked. Maka nodded, then sat up and shook her head.

"I don't know. Nothing's gone right since my partner deserted the Guild. None of it... And each time it goes wrong, it's worse than the last." Maka clenched a fist against the wagon floor, "Trying to find a person, trying to get someone to forgive me without knowing what I did wrong, trying to become a Maestro without a Disciple because I'm failing at being forgiven. And now, hurting my teacher. Nothing is going right at all."

"I understand," Crona said.

Maka turned and glared at him, "I don't want empty words, or standard and thoughtless phrases! You can say what you mean with your own words; that you feel bad for me, or that I'm annoying you, or you think I'm whining. But you're a private soldier training to protect rich merchants from poor bandits; whatever problems you're faced with are surmountable and clearly defined! Learn to fight harder, and faster, with more techniques, and run errands for your 'elder comrade'. You're in a career where hard work can fix anything, so don't pretend to understand with someone else's words!" She stopped for breath and her face softened, then dropped as she turned away again. "Sorry, I went too far."

Crona sat up next to her and watched the bonfire struggle against the wind and rain. "It's okay."

"Nothing's okay. I keep messing up, and everyone's so nice to me anyway, and forgive me too quickly when I haven't earned it."

"I meant more, um, I don't really mind that much because you were mistaken, about the things you said about me." Crona scratched his head, and began to regret his decision to attempt helping her. "That I don't have complicated problems, or that hard work is enough."

"Sorry. I shouldn't have said those things; I don't know enough about traveling bodyguards to say them."

Crona shook his head, "No, not about that. I'm just here for awhile; I don't plan to do this forever, or even for long. It's just a job, with room and board included alongside wages, and it's also a means to leave and get away from anyplace I might have memories. That's enough to start with, but before long I think I'll want to be doing something else, maybe in one place instead of living on the road." He blushed at talking about himself, but Maka didn't notice for the dim lighting.

"I didn't know," Maka said. "You were unhappy at home?"

"I'm not sure, but either way I lost it. My home. So leaving was the only option; I didn't have a choice."

"But you could have stayed in the same town, couldn't you? You said you didn't want to see place you'd recognize; doesn't that mean you didn't like it back there? Since you want to settle in one place eventually, I don't think it's from adventurous spirit..." Maka trailed off as she realized she was asking questions and making judgments of too personal a nature.

"Is that why I left?" Crona mumbled to himself. 'Didn't I just want to avoid being recognized and caught? Yet I'm sitting here talking with the girl who's trying to catch me. Then, was I trying to run from my past life? My memories, and myself?'

Maka picked up a stocky chopping of wood and tossed it into the fire. It landed off center but nestled into a solid position between a log and a pile of kindling. A few sparks flew from it, but it was reinforcements in the battle against the storm.

Crona felt tired, and his curiosity, anxiety, and faded anger combined to loosen his tongue. "I'm not a very smart person, like a doctor or a general, but will you let me try to help?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not sure what I mean. To hear you out and try to give advice, I guess. Though maybe you won't want advice from someone your own age," Crona said. "What did you say your troubles were?"

"I hurt someone earlier. My teacher, while we were training. A Maestro taught me that technique and said never to use unless it was a life or death situation. I used it in a simple training exercise, and she got hurt."

"I'm sure you apologized right after?"

"Of course!" Maka said. "After I helped her up. And she said it was nothing, but then why can't I stop thinking about it?"

"You just feel bad for doing it," Crona said. With some reluctance he added, "You feel guilty. But it was only a mistake! I think you've done enough; you don't need to 'earn' anything, or pay her back. Remembering how bad you feel now will keep you from making the same mistake later."

"I didn't decide to do it though," Maka said. "It happened in an instant. If it happens again, I won't have time to think about how it made me feel in the past."

"Don't worry about that," Crona said with a bittersweet smile. "Guilt is more powerful than you think."

"Do you," Maka began slowly, "feel guilty about something?"

Crona nodded.

"Was it something you did accidentally? Or, a decision you regret making?"

"It's not really any one thing. Everything together, I guess." Crona thought of the pains Medusa had caused the locals for years, and how he did nothing to stop or lessen her actions. Then, when the coven was killed beneath the Brocken, how he had been the only survivor. "I never did anything good. Or nice, or kind. It took me a long time to realize that, so when I did it felt like the entire world would be justified in ignoring me."

"But you never did anything bad, did you? And I'm sure you've done a few kind things, at some point."

Crona remembered the beast in the Brocken he had killed so they could advance; the slime he tried to mug; the people of Armsung whom he helped defraud. Going back further, he thought of people Medusa attacked or cursed, and how he stood by without even realizing it was wrong, sometimes even assisting her. His blind acceptance of blood magic, and how he cleaned and housekept for Medusa to allow her more time for activities with the coven.

"If I did something kind, I don't remember it." He did not answer her first question.

"You stopped to talk with me, despite the rain and hour," Maka said.

Crona looked up as a bolt of lightning thundered down in the distance and flashed daylight on his wet face. The light diminished back to that of the fire, and he wiped his face with his hand. "Wasn't I supposed to be helping you? Everything's gotten reversed, all of a sudden."

Maka heard the thankful tone of his voice, and nodded. To help another subsided her own guilt. "Then, how about my partner? Do you have any advice for reconciling with someone, when they won't say what you've done?"

Crona thought. "Not generally."

"Oh well. Soul isn't worth the trouble, anyway."

"Soul? He's your partner?"

"You know him?"

"We met before I joined the caravan," Crona explained. "I didn't know you two were friends."

"We're not," Maka said. "We might have been... I think we used to be. But he left the King's Guild just to get away from me. I can't call him a friend, or a partner, after that."

"Is that why he escaped?" Crona felt something off, and tried to remember what Soul had said in Armsung. 'I wish I'd paid more attention to him. But it wasn't about a person he hated, was it?'

"'I didn't leave to get something new, but to get rid of something old,' is about what he said," Maka recited. "He never spent much time with anyone there except me. Even from a distance it's obvious, isn't it? He hates me so much he won't even tell me what I did."

'Did Soul say he hated his partner?' Crona ran through the two days he spent with Soul, searching for times the renegade had opened up. A stray memory of dialogue lit up, and brought in others by connection. "I don't think he left to get away from you specifically, or, that is..." Crona felt Maka's gaze as she waited for him to continue. 'She wants a way to solve Soul's problem. Of course she would be caught by the first hint of what it is, but,' he stared out to the enfeebled bonfire, 'is it really something I'm qualified to explain?'

"Go on," Maka said.

"Soul said he had bad luck," Crona began, and swallowed. "He said he didn't like the Guild itself, but didn't mention any specific people."

"The guild? He never complained about it to me. He just left without warning one day." Maka turned to the fire too, and considered. "What about it did he dislike? The food? Our superiors? Training?"

"It was more he thought the Guild shouldn't exist in this country; that the King shouldn't have invaded; that Disciples should have been left alone."

"Huh? No one is even alive from back then except the King. Why would he feel so strongly about something so old?"

"It was a whole country, you know," Crona said, suddenly annoyed. "A country that doesn't exist anymore, with festivals and a language and cuisine, and laws and values. Soul didn't like that his ancestors were in charge of themselves, while he isn't. King Death is in charge now, without any way for Soul to change that. Not to mention," Crona hesitated and wondered whether he should go on, but saw no way to stop. "I think he might be afraid he'll come to accept how things are now, like his ancestors did."

Maka watched the rain fall. "Is that how it is," she said after several moments. "Soul never said any of that to me."

"He's angry," Crona offered. "You're a Maestro, so no matter how nice you were, he probably saw you as the same as everyone else; a person wanting his power as a Disciple for their own advancement." Crona winced as he realized he went too far.

"That's not true!" Maka shouted as she stood up, her head nearly hitting the canvas above. "I wanted to get stronger, sure, but so did he! We trained together for over two years before he threw it away without a goodbye. I saw Maestros-in-training who were cold to their Disciples, but then I saw my favorite teachers warm to theirs, and the choice was easy! Soul felt left out, so I included him; Soul was bullied, so I defended him! We ate every meal together and cooked for each other, and I always called him my 'partner' instead of 'Disciple', and when he was sick I sat out of classes too despite the consequences just so we could spend time later catching up together! I thought we were friends, and would keep training and growing together, forever; then he walked out, and left me alone."

"I don't know you very well," Crona said, "and I don't know what Soul thinks or feels, beyond what he's said to me; some of what I told you was guesswork. But from that little I know to be certain, I can tell you Soul is angry at the Guild, and it's blinding him. I can tell you are angry at Soul, but I can't tell whether or not you're blinded too. I think neither of you are wrong, you both just went a little too far and now it's awkward to patch things back together, right?" Crona stood up, and Maka stepped back. "I don't know, so I can't tell you how to fix this, even though I want to be able to. Maka, don't give up. I don't want to see a friendship end like that, or a partnership."

Firelight illuminated Crona's face consistently, and Maka watched as it changed from confident and assuring to confused and anxious as Crona again realized how much and how sternly he had spoken. He sat down where he had before, and looked up at her after a few moments when neither said anything. There was a flicker of recognition, there and gone again, as she looked at his face. Maka said, "You're right."

Crona half-nodded, then shrugged.

A quiet developed. After thinking about it, Crona realized one of the feelings he had just experienced was jealousy. 'After all, she has a set goal; become a Maestro,' he thought. 'No matter how difficult or complicated that is, at least she knows where she's going, whereas I'm just wandering.'

Maka grimaced at her own swirling, guilty thoughts. That Soul felt that way so long without telling her, and she hadn't seen it herself, or even considered it just once. And that she could for a moment mistake this quiet but helpful trainee for the demon she was hunting.

* * *

Crona climbed into his wagon soaked and dripping. He took off his gambeson, a warm article worn beneath armor and issued to him upon employment with a hauberk, breastplate, and gauntlets, and dried off in his black cassock, recently washed in secret to get the blood out. He soon realized the back half of the wagon was vacant. Outside the storm continued, neither lessening nor growing heavier. 'Did Mifune leave to search for me after how long I took?' he wondered, and shook his head. 'No, he wouldn't go through the trouble unless it was certain something bad happened.'

He leaned against the wall of the wagon to wait. Isolation led to thinking over what he said to Maka, followed by a storm of self-doubting questions. 'Which parts should I not have said? What should I have said differently? Will anything I told her be of use? Why am I helping the girl whose quarry I am?'

Crona was dragged from his thoughts when Mifune lifted himself into the wagon. They looked at each other a moment before Mifune said, "Do you remember what I said yesterday, about secrets between comrades?"

Crona nodded, and felt his stomach drop as his throat dried. 'He learned somehow; I don't know how, but he knows about me.'

Mifune turned back and picked something up, and lifted it into the wagon. It was a bundle of oddly tied straw.

'It?'

Crona watched as the bundle shifted, and revealed its true nature. Standing between the two bodyguards, in a straw rain cape and farmer's hat and standing on raised clogs, was a little girl. She stared at him, and he at her, before both turned to Mifune.

"She is Angela, a child I'm protecting. None else of the caravan can know about her," Mifune told Crona.

"But why tell me? Even if we're comrades, if no one else can know I'm not sure I should either."

"I can only take her out to play when it's raining," Mifune said. "Otherwise the sentry might see or hear her, and she would be found out. It rained tonight, so tonight you learned."

Angela had taken her hat and cape off from over her black and cream dress, and pointed at Crona, a black stone bracelet pushed up almost to her elbow. "I'm a secret, so don't tell anyone! Mifune'll get mad at you!"

Crona nodded and tried to smile politely, inexperienced with children and unsure how to deal with them. "Mifune," he said looking up, "there's something I should tell you, too." His heart turned as he moved to reveal his past for the first time. But Mifune put up a hand for him to stop.

"You can tell me if it becomes important. There shouldn't be secrets between comrades... I said that, but my meaning was that comrades should be willing to say anything, not that they need to know everything about each other all at once."

"...Mm. Goodnight, then."

As his mind drifted off, Crona wondered why he had wanted to share the truth. 'Because he told me about Angela? Or because I wanted to hear what he thought... Or just to tell someone...'

The drone of rain against the wagon's canvas lulled him to sleep.


	5. A Violent Vocation, Part Two

The sun, an hour above the horizon, betrayed itself to Crona by cast shadows as he sat rear facing in the westward caravan. Mifune sat behind him, his thoughts impenetrable. The angle of the shadows told Crona they would not make camp for another half hour. To his surprise, the wagon stopped regardless. Behind him, Mifune opened his eyes.

"It's time to earn our wages."

Crona rose and followed Mifune to the front of the caravan where the King's Guild's representative stood waiting for them, Maka loitering nearby.

"Azusa saw them ten minutes ago, but Joe wanted to keep going until we were sure," Marie told Mifune, motioning down the road. Crona peered.

A line of trees marked the edge of an orchard, a massive tree deeper in towering above the rest, and the enshaded road continued through the orchard. The low sun gave a backlight and was blocked by silhouettes stood in trees, and beside the trees near the road; if it were noon, they would be almost invisible. Their postures were untenable, and Crona grimaced.

"And just when we nearly reached Monmouth, too," Marie said. "It's only another day from here, if we can get through."

"Bandits who hide in shade won't be difficult to deal with," Mifune said. "They will be fine training for Crona. When scoundrels make their own shadows to hide in is when they are dangerous."

Marie shook her head and handed Mifune a spyglass. A severe woman Crona recognized as the lookout came to them, and he saw the chief merchant, Joe, watch the group from several wagons back. Crona turned back and saw Mifune return the glass and glare at the sentry.

"You should have alerted us when they were first sighted," he said. "There would have been enough time to change course at the last fork. To turn around now would open our defenses to attacks."

"You're supposed to be a miracle with a sword, aren't you?" Azusa said. "I saw it myself, three days ago. Just fill your role and protect the caravan; leave strategy to those it concerns."

"And it concerns a sentry?" Mifune asked. "Two alone were more difficult than I'd expected. You want two bodyguards to defeat an army?"

"Calm down, you two." Marie stepped between them, "With that many of them, there must be a reason they're here. I'll go negotiate with them as mediator; that's my role. Maka, stay here with Azusa and Joe. You two bodyguards, come with-"

"Who will defend the merchants?" Crona asked. As soon as he spoke he regretted it, as he remembered his ordained role was to act along orders, not to second-guess them.

Marie saw his embarrassment and smiled to relax him, "Don't worry, they can't know how many fighters we have with us, and surely won't think we've brought all of them to a negotiations meeting." She waved an arm at Joe, who shouted a few orders, and soon a two wheeled carriage was brought to them, wider than it was long and drawn by two horses. Marie and the two combatants boarded, and the party set off.

* * *

The orchard's edge was two thousand meters from the stopped caravan. Marie held the horses at a steady pace, slow enough they wouldn't be toppled by a sudden ambush from the tall grass along the road. Crona looked back and saw the caravan circle itself. "They're setting up camp even in these conditions?"

"It's because of these conditions," Marie said. "Normally we'd like to get to the orchard first, to have shelter if it storms again like last night. But by the earliest time we might get back with word of successful talks with whoever's leading that group, it will be time to make camp anyway; and if there isn't any such word, being circled will make the defense easier."

"Circling the wagons won't be enough to keep them at bay, without even one man-at-arms," Mifune said.

"So if there's an attack, don't let them past us," Marie said frostily.

It was fifteen minutes, three quarters of the gulf, before Crona saw and realized the cause of the concern. He remembered Marie implied they weren't ordinary bandits, and thought, 'So that's what she meant.' The casual phrase which sprung to his mind calmed the dread which spiked as he watched them.

Three days ago. The sentry, Azusa, wasn't just thinking of Mifune's power when she made her comparison; she put his opponent into the equation as well.

Eighteenth. Twenty-ninth. Crona wondered how high their numbers went. Standing at the edge of the orchard were, he guessed, at least fifty of their ilk and kin. He wondered whether Ragnarok had ever feared.

The encroaching shadows of the trees, elongated by the horizonal sun, pushed Crona out of his terrific daze. At Mifune's warning, Marie pulled the reins and the horses slowed to a halt.

"Let them come to us from here. I can take down any enemy if I see them, so we must face them and not be surrounded," Mifune said.

Marie nodded and stood up. "Good evening!" She shouted, her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice. "I'm a representative of the King's Guild, here to negotiate for that caravan's safety. With whom will I speak?"

The misshapen masses in the orchard looked to each other, and a low murmur of discussion emanated across the distance, before one of them leapt deeper into the orchard. Crona blocked out the sun with his hand to see trees rustle where the thing went, one after another, and was not surprised to see it reach the giant tree at the center. He tried to guess its size, and doubted the caravan's length matched the tree's height. As if to punctuate how comically enlarged it was, Crona noticed a bird approach the tree's unseasonal foliage, and fly around rather than above. It wasn't long after when a short man came out from the orchard's edge. He was well dressed, wore a high hat, and had a long nose.

"I am their leader," he announced. "And though I doubt you will succeed in securing safety from them, I'll indulge you." With a wave he signaled for the others to stay, and walked alone to the carriage.

Marie took two cushions and spread them on the grass before sitting on one, her legs tucked beneath her. The man took his seat with crossed legs. Crona stood with Mifune beside the carriage and observed the meeting, while Mifune guarded it by facing the orchard.

"This is a mercantile caravan," Marie said. "While it has some number of rested combatants to protect against highwaymen, it is not a group to attack unprovoked. Let it pass for a reasonable tariff, and your men won't be harmed. I swear it, on King Death's name."

"And when you arrive at your destination, you won't betray our location or numbers? What about the next time you're at his citadel? If you pass a barrack's worth of soldiers marching this way, you would keep particulars about us from them? On your king's name, of course."

"Do you own this orchard?" Marie asked.

"Why should it matter?"

"If this is your estate, then no, we won't reveal your location, except perhaps to fellow merchants. But if you are merely lodged here and attempt to toll through intimidation, it will be my responsibility to inform other Guildsmen."

"In that case, yes, I am the lord of this fiefdom. Could you not tell by my fine clothes?"

Marie nodded, "If you take me and one of my bodyguards to the manor of the land, that I might see the deed with Death's seal, we would be glad to pay a five percent tariff on our goods in the morning, and pass through your orchard before noon."

He shook his head, "The manor sadly stands no more. It was burned to the brickwork, all but one wing razed, generations ago. Near its ruins are a garish villa with the sealed deed you want; but I do not know whose name it bears. Probably the fellow we killed last month."

Marie tensed. "You said you were lord of the land?"

"By birthright and blood, not your Death's decree," he sneered. "My great-grandfather was the lord of a small but noble court, within this orchard. Death killed him, personally. I returned with my band to reclaim it, and found that villa I mentioned."

"You'll understand I can not promise your safety," Marie said. "Nonetheless, I ask you let us pass unharmed. This caravan is bound for Monmouth, where the King has no army stationed. It would be a fortnight before the Guild learns of you, enough time to move beyond Death's borders with the tariff's proceeds."

The man took off his hat and laughed. From the color of his hair Crona saw he was older than he'd thought; he also felt a glimpse of recognition, but as he noticed it, it departed. "Then it would also be a fortnight before they infer something happened, should those merchants and you be buried beneath the fruit trees. You can't bribe my men with Groschen; they want revenge, not riches. It's too late for that, for them."

"Too late? I doubt you run a roving colony of banditing lepers. Money is useful to everyone; explain yourself further, please."

"It's too late for you, too, so I'll allow you that much." He reached up and waved his hand, and held up his index finger. One of the figures, standing half hidden by a tree, stumbled out to meet them, and stood beside Marie and the man. Crona moved his hand to Ragnarok's hilt, but was reassured by Mifune's lack of any visible reaction.

"Meet the Fifty-first," the man said. "Though, it's rude to introduce another without having first introduced oneself." He stood up and held his hat to his chest, and took a bow. "Mosquito, rightful heir of this orchard, whether your king would agree or not." Mosquito sat back down, "This is the Fifty-first I met with, and so the one thus named."

"Fifty-first of what?" Marie asked. Whatever the answer was to be, the shadow the Fifty-first cast over her in the dimming light unnerved Marie.

"Of my merry men. They're all of the same class and vocation, so locating them was not difficult, only time consuming. To what degree do you know your own history, madame?"

Marie said nothing.

"When your king arrived here, there were dozens of kingdoms, duchies, unaffiliated or otherwise free cities, and so on. Of course, they all had royal courts, even the least. But none exist now; even Monmouth, which you mentioned, is a duchy sprung from after Death's invasion, not a survivor of it. They all were wiped out by him.

"To prevent them from ever again assembling, he had a policy of massacring the courts. Any high noblemen, any judges, or generals, or guards, or gardeners, or chefs, or fleet-of-foot messengers; all were executed to prevent future resistance."

"Over a hundred years ago," Marie said. "What's your point? That it's time for a regressive revolution to turn back the clocks?"

"I don't oppose the idea," Mosquito replied. "But the dozens of deposed kings aren't my concern. Even the noblemen aren't, my lordly ancestor aside. I'm not a simpleton; I understand Death's reasons, and would have done the same. Empires are built, empires fall. From an outside perspective, nothing can be done about it, and nothing is wrong with that.

"However! He massacres soldiers and sovereigns, and I hold my tongue. He kills gardeners and messengers, and I suppose it's to keep them from engaging in rebellious suicide missions. But to kill the customary three jesters of each court; unarmed, harmless, half-dumb entertainers; it is unjustifiable. So I have them here gathered, to become a festering thorn in Death's side. Unfortunately for you and that caravan of merchants, a thorn can not fester before causing some pains."

"Again, that was all over a century ago. Unless the three jesters of each court were actually witches, there's no way for them to be alive at this point," Marie said.

"I never said they were alive!" Mosquito shouted. "Do you think a death brimmed with hatred and desire for vengeance could leave a person to move on? Of course not! Death created a new class of beings entirely, something original, by his own hands that day! A hundred jesters' ghosts; that is what you stand against, you and your two lonesome bodyguards!" He punctuated the declaration with a narrow glance at Crona, and the swordsman shivered.

Marie took a deep breath. "I'm afraid none of this has glad tidings for our negotiations. I have offered five percent of our goods, and would offer as high as fifteen to attain us safe passage. Since you are out not for money but blood, which I can not offer, I must withdraw the offer." She nodded respectfully to him as she stood up.

Mosquito snapped his fingers.

Crona realized Mifune was gone from his side; already the expert had rushed between the two cushions. His sword rattled against the pressure of the jester's hand, and kept its clawed fingers from reaching Marie's face.

From the tree line, eight dozen of the jester's brethren slunk toward the group and caravan. They accelerated.

Marie felt her arm tugged as Crona pulled her back and took her position. He let go, but the pull returned as Maka led her to the carriage. "What are you doing here?" Marie asked.

"I'm sorry for not following orders," Maka said, "but I was no help there, whereas here-!" She kicked aside a clown, careful not to let her leg be caught, and with her free hand grabbed the side of the carriage. "Here I can at least make sure you're safe!"

Crona drew on his experience three days ago and his training since to bat away the arriving jesters. Their heft complicated the effort, and he grunted, frustrated. "Aren't ghosts supposed to be spectral? Why are they so heavy?!"

"Because they're weighed down with regrets!" Ragnarok shouted, as his edge took an arm near the shoulder. Over that shoulder Crona saw Maka and Marie try to escape as the horses reared and turned. Crona turned too, back to the swarm of clowns, but the sound of a crash rang out, and he continued to spin until he faced the carriage again.

In a sea of a hundred clowns, it only took a single one, whom Mosquito once numbered Seventy-one, to crush the carriage's axle and right wheel. The ensuing crash sent Maka and Marie to the ground.

Crona lunged through a jester's ghost with Ragnarok's point and, straining himself beyond his assumed capability, lifted it. For a moment it obscured the setting sun to three observers, and came down with a battle cry onto one of them, the Seventy-first. The two clowns landed bashed together a few meters away, and Crona panted, "Run back, to the 'van." He took a deep breath and turned to the direction he last saw Mifune. "Hurry."

Maka helped Marie up and once again pulled her arm as she led their return. She glanced back appreciatively, and saw Crona split the horses' harness with his sword.

Crona pulled himself onto one of the horses, climbing up rather than using the stirrups. Before he was ready, the horse bolted to avoid a clown's lethal arm swing. Crona hugged its neck and leaned to the side, hoping it would turn back to the fray.

"Of all the idiotic things you've done, Crona!" Ragnarok screeched. "You already know how this plan ends, don't you? You swing me at a ghost, the impact knocks you off the horse, and we both die!"

"Not yet!" Crona called over the sound of wind and hooves. "Mifune is relying on me; I can't die yet!"

"I wish it'd been wine in that jug, and I was still sealed," Ragnarok grumbled.

The horse finally understood Crona's signal and turned around, reluctant but well trained. The impromptu cavalier opened a charge against the mass of jesting death.

"Ragnarok, thank you."

"Huh? Don't go saying stupid stuff like that, or you'll definitely die, and me with you! That's how these things usually work, isn't it? So shut up, at least for my sake!"

"We may not get along, but I wouldn't be able to protect people if it weren't for you; blood magic is verboten, after all. I wouldn't have thought to use a sword on my own, so it's thanks to you I've been able to meet new people these past few days."

"Not leaving any loose threads for the end, huh?" Somehow, the sword smiled. "In that case, there's something I should say, too." Ragnarok took in unnecessary air to build Crona's expectation, and said, "I hate this! It sucks! I want to go home! Things were way better back in my day; now I'm stuck with you! Is this hell? Am I in hell? I know I've done enough to earn it, but-"

Crona shouted from exertion as he swung the sword against the first clown they passed. The connection was solid, and it rattled him in his armor; but the weight and velocity of the sword trumped that of the ghost, and Ragnarok cut through the clown and passed out the other side.

"I expected the shining stairs and pearly gates, anyway!"

"Aren't you done yet?" Crona asked.

"It's because you interrupted me before, you sonuva-"

The sword was pushed through another jester, lancing the foe.

"You did that on purpose!"

"You. Are. A. Sword! Expect it!"

The sword stuck out its tongue in curt reply.

* * *

Distracted by Crona, the ghosts neglected to chase Maka and Marie. The two reached the caravan safe, ten minutes later.

Marie stumbled at the end and Joe caught her. She grabbed his shoulders and looked up in a craze, "Don't you have more guards? Something to stop them? Those... That army is going to ruin everything!"

"Calm down," Joe said. "Azusa monitored the negotiations, so we've already started to prepare defenses. We can't outrun them, but barricading ourselves and arming the laborers might be enough."

"But your two professionals are having trouble as it is!" Maka put in. "Pitchforks and torches won't be enough against those things; last time there was two of them, and that was bad enough, but right now there's a hundred!"

"We don't have any choice," Joe said. "They're too fast, too strong, and won't accept bribes. If they want us dead, our only option is to fortify and wait. Maybe they'll get bored after a few nights, or we might be able to sneak through a messenger to bring help."

Marie let go of him, "Come under siege? Wait for help? You know that would only increase our losses, right? We can't defend so perfectly no one will get hurt before help arrives; you know that, right?"

Joe nodded. "We can't afford to go on the offensive here. It isn't an option."

Marie began to walk away, but stopped after a few steps. Maka followed her, and when Marie turned around she put her hand on Maka's head. "Even I have people here I want to protect, Joe! And people I want to see again, too. If my student's life is put in danger-"

Maka looked up at her in confusion. Were Marie and Joe so familiar? Why was she so upset with him; it was a bad situation, but there's nothing they can do but persevere. Looking up, Maka was struck by how intensely Marie's eye glared at the head merchant.

"I'll do whatever it takes to protect her." The tone of Marie's voice wasn't exclamatory now, but definite. It was a final statement of truth.

Joe shrugged, as though he'd heard a threat. "I have a defense to organize."

"Marie, let's go help them prepare," Maka said, gently taking her arm. "I'm sure the ghosts won't hold off long before coming to us."

Marie watched Joe walk away, then nodded. A small spot low on her leather eyepatch, darkened by a teardrop, went unnoticed.

* * *

"Mifune!"

Crona called to the crowd of clowns, but his cry was deafened by the mass, and went unanswered. As he rode deeper into the horde, he fought against his sword swings' drift toward instinct. 'Don't fight thoughtlessly; think about your attacks, Crona!'

A low swing when the angle was right, a high swing when it was wrong, and a lancing jab if there was no angle. 'Don't fight like a berserker,' Crona reminded himself as he and the horse were swallowed further and further by the surrounding clowns. He was only able to attack and defend his front and sides; a blind swing from behind knocked him off the horse, which trampled two jesters and disappeared in the swarm.

'Wasn't there just a hundred? Isn't this too many?' From his view on the ground, Crona no longer saw anything but jesters' ghosts and, for a second or two before the dam burst and the group collapsed in on him, the fading orange sky.

Keeping conscious of his attacks, why and how he executed them, staved off Crona's encroaching despair. A switch clicked in his mind in a gap between seconds, though he didn't notice. Crona remained aware of his attacks, and their thought process; he did not give in to instinct. However, at the same time he held an inner monologue, and did not until later realize the two should have been mutually exclusive. At that time, Ragnarok would berate him for not knowing what being 'in the zone' meant, and Crona would shoot back that he had never heard of it before. Nor would he realize until later still that the latter scene had been, in fact, happy. That he had been bantering, not fighting, and with a comrade, not an annoyance.

But these foresights were not available to Crona during the battle; only the flowing thoughts were.

'At what point did I begin to think of Mifune as someone I can't lose? It wasn't when we met, but it was before this battle began. And why? If Mifune is killed here, why should I care? He's already taught me the basics of swordsmanship, and I'm not chasing a higher level of skill. We barely know each other and, with our separate watches, only spend a few hours together each day. Why should I care?'

Meanwhile, Crona's flurry of swings, lunges, and parries continued against the horde.

'Oh, maybe it doesn't matter. Is that it? Ah, that's nice to finally realize. There might be a hidden reason: I could want to save him because he confided in me about Angela, or because he taught me and took me under his wing, or because I don't want Angela to lose her guardian, or because I think he's cool, or because I think he'll protect me in the future. But that's not important; none of it really matters, does it? I need to help him right now, because I don't want him to die.' Despite the dirt and stress of battle, Crona smiled. "I'm glad I've become such a simple person!"

A lull in attacks cut off both lines of thought, introspective and combatant. The ghost clowns formed a ring around him, one or two of their bodies left in it before popping into a dark and fading mist.

"Didya' scare'em?" Ragnarok asked as Crona looked around in confusion. "You survived better than I expected; keep that up until I find a way out of your puny body, okay?"

Crona noticed Mosquito standing half a meter away and jolted, before he pointed Ragnarok at him. "What do you-"

"You've certainly grown up, little boy," Mosquito said. "You've tripled in height since last we met."

"I don't remember you."

"It was a little over a decade ago, before I raised this army. I needed a strategy, and advice; who better to discuss an army of this type with than a witch?"

Crona gritted his teeth and took a step toward Mosquito.

"Of course, with the eradication festival a few nights ago, she must not be alive anymore. So tell me, how is it you're alive?"

"I'm not a witch," Crona said, as he raised Ragnarok.

"Correct, you're no witch. When we met back then, she complained about her bad luck, birthing a boy instead of a proper heir. As long ago as it was, I remember she had some regrets on the matter. And you're him, I'm sure? Kurona, son of the witch Medu- KaH!"

Mosquito was cut off by the sword, which interrupted his body from hat to ground.

"You're wrong. You're not mistaken, but wrong," Crona said. "I'm not her son, anymore."

Ragnarok smirked.

* * *

"They've turned their attention to us!" Azusa shouted, "Be ready for their attack in five minutes!"

Maka lifted another load of firewood and carried it from the wagon to the perimeter. She let it down onto a pile, and glanced at the workers hammering logs into the ground to build a spaced stockade, before she turned to get more. Behind her, two of the laborers tied the logs together with oil-soaked ropes.

"Five minutes isn't enough time," Maka muttered as she walked back to the wagon. Marie, walking purposefully across the camp with her fists clenched at her side, caught Maka's eye. Fearing another confrontation with Joe, Maka went toward her.

Azusa stepped out from between two wagons and spread her arms. "Don't try it, Mjolnir."

Marie grabbed Azusa's right arm and pushed it down as she walked past her, "I won't risk Maka."

Azusa spun around and grabbed Marie's arm, but she struggled free and kept walking. "You're being selfish, and disobeying orders!" Azusa called after her.

Maka reached her and asked, "What's this about? Why is Marie fighting with you and the head merchant?"

"You should ask her," Azusa said. "See if she's willing to go so far as to tell you."

"Tell me what?" Maka persisted, but Azusa left with a backward wave. Maka turned the other way and followed Marie again.

Marie walked with her face down, trying not to consider the consequences of what she was about to do. Her head bumped into somebody's chest as she stepped on their shadow, and felt the press of a pectoral cross against her forehead from beneath their robes. Marie looked up and saw a blonde priest.

"Let me through, Justin."

He looked down at her, silently.

"I don't have a choice. Everyone's lives will be danger if I don't do it. I have a student now, and it's my job to protect her!"

Justin said nothing.

"I don't care about orders, this is more important than that; please understand, and let me pass!"

Maka put a hand on Marie's shoulder from behind, "I don't know what's going on," she said, "but you don't need to go so far to protect me. We've been training so I can look out for myself, right?"

"A teacher has a duty to their students-"

"One of those duties should be not to worry them, shouldn't it?" Maka asked. "You've been acting strange since those things in the forest were sighted; no, even before then, since last night. This isn't about what I did, is it?"

Marie looked in surprise at Maka's strained face, and relaxed. "No, I haven't been thinking about that. I said it's fine, right? You don't need to dwell on it any longer. It's something else... I'm sorry, Maka, but I can't tell you what. Only that it has to do with protecting you, and everyone else. So," she straightened her stance, "Justin, please let me pass."

The priest breathed a small gasp for a prelude. "'Follow his word, for it is the word of Death, and will guide you in safety through to life's end.'"

A cool breeze blew past.

"A... A theological quote?" Maka recalled reading it in a book as part of her studies, and tried to remember who wrote it.

"What else is there to say? Marie, you just told her you can't reveal what you're about to do. Doesn't that mean your resolve has already wavered?" He smiled and tilted his head slightly, and Maka wondered whether he was charming by coincidence or forced into priesthood after a youth spent as a playboy. "'Be not idle in the hour of work,' seems pertinent now."

Marie's arm tensed, "Maybe I'm more unsure than I'd like to admit, but I can't put my student in harm's way-"

"Neither can I." Justin extended a hand, and patted Marie's head. "Don't worry. He gave me his word. We will live through this; 'I won't let even one of my camp die before their time,' was it? It's his word, but for tonight, consider it mine. You won't die here, either of you."

Justin withdrew, to return to his undescribed work. Marie stood staring at the ground a minute. Maka waited next to her.

"They're beginning to arrive; all able hands to the perimeters!"

From the circular boundary of the camp, the heat, sound, smell, and light of their fiery defense sprang up.

Marie gritted her teeth and turned around to go back to the others, grabbing Maka's hand as she did.

* * *

"Your sword-flailing is getting smooth, Crona," Ragnarok noted. "Hah, you're smiling like a blood knight! Did something good happen?"

"I found out the trick to beating them," Crona said, as he demonstrated his new technique. A ghost clown swung its arm at him, and Crona ducked and held the sword in the arm's path. The limb flew, and the enemy was slew. "Their arms don't work. That's why they keep swinging at me; the clowns can only control their shoulders, not their arms themselves." He detached the arms of another clown, and continued, "Except the one that picked me up three days ago, anyway."

"And you know why they can't?" Ragnarok asked.

"How would I?" A third fell. "Wait, do you know?"

"I know everything except why you're so stalkish, and I have my suspicions on that.

"When Death came to this land and killed off everyone in the noble courts like he was some hack writer, the first jester he killed didn't resist. Instead, he claimed he understood Death's worry that such dangerous weapons as his corporal arms must be buried to protect the new peace, and extended his upwards hands to illustrate his wordplay. Death hated the jest, and the jester no less, and so executed him by having his shoulders cut."

"And then?"

"Then nothing; it was infection, or bad weather, or tumultuous mobs with cliched pitchforks and tiki torches which finished the job. The clown that grabbed you earlier probably bent under the blade like a limbo pole and starved in the woods later. That communal trauma is what made these dead clowns a new class of beings to stand with kobolds, slimes, fairies, other sprites and demons, and all the rest."

"What kind of thing are you, Ragnarok? A demon? Oh, are you a blood-slime?"

The sword smirked, "I am Ragnarok, the sword to end the world by ushering in a battle between gods with a single swing and ca-"

Crona, with a blank expression, jabbed him through a clown's torso.

"Not even under the arm; you did that on purpose! For sure, this time! I know!"

"Stop fuming, I just didn't want to hear how you're going to end the world. That kind of thing should be a surprise, don't you think? You should delay it; put it off until I forget what I just heard."

"I can't put it off, you idiot! It's predestined! Fated!"

The two fell into a grudged silence for the span of a few more fallen clowns, until Ragnarok began to laugh. "Oh man, I just realized! Their arms don't work, so they flutter behind them when they run; and they're called clowns!"

"I don't get it."

"Crona, in some places, clowns are called 'pierrot'. And their arms don't work!"

"I still don't get it!" Crona shouted as he brought the sword into a swing, but the tension between them was lifted without the hassle of understanding.

And still, Crona concentrated on his swings.

Stripped of their leader, the ghost clowns become unfettered, their ordered restrictions lifted with Mosquito's life. While their movements increased in frenzy, Crona's barrage led to their formation cracking, and through that crack, he caught sight of Mifune, equally successful against the horde. The ghosts' numbers continued to thin, while the two fighters went on.

A few strikes, and Crona pushed himself into the same gap as Mifune.

"Their leader is dead," Crona told him. "We only need to finish these guys."

"You sound confident."

Crona smiled nervously, though his back was to his teacher. "I feel it, for once. Confidence unmarred. It's pretty new to me, but-"

"Unbridled, you mean. Don't let go of the reins," Mifune said, and changed his style. "I'm going back to the caravan to ensure the line isn't broken, and won't become so. Dispatch these final few, with care." By 'final few,' he referred to the remaining scores.

"Right!"

Mifune hurried off into the mass of apparitions.

Crona turned his attention back to his work.

* * *

But the work was gone.

Crona turned again, searching for the vanished clowns. 'Did they all lose their will to fight and live, and fade away?' Something moved in his peripheral vision, and Crona focused on it. A black, writhing mass was a hundred yards from and parallel to the road; the remaining clowns. He spun around; it was the same opposite them. In an instant, the ghosts had retreated from the road to either side. 'But why?' A shadow, harsher than the dusk it darkened, enclosed him. Crona looked up.

It was a tree.

No, it was the tree.

The mammoth, titanic, excessively sized tree at the center of the orchard appeared taller than earlier. Crona understood that was merely an illusion caused when the tree was raised above the ground and suspended there. The distant representation of a clown's ghost, a two-toned dot in the air below the trunk, apparently caused the lift.

A gust of wind struck his face from the displacement, and a ring of dust, the thick lower edge of an expanding hemisphere, flew past. The tree so tall birds detoured around it was airborne.

It tilted, roots toward them.

Crona hoped it was beginning to fall back to the ground, to crush whatever had caused its brief flight. Ragnarok shouted something incomprehensible against the silence of shock, and the weight of the sword lifted from Crona's hands, followed by the rest of his weight from his feet. He felt himself lift off the ground, too.

Ragnarok shifted to the form of wings, as he had the night they met, and flew forward against Crona's will, bearing right at the desperate speed of self-preservation. He only stopped when they reached the line of trees, outside the danger zone outlined by the ghosts reluctant to die a second death. At that point, Ragnarok resumed the sword.

Crona watched powerless as the tree, possibly the largest on the planet, assuredly the highest in the kingdom, hurtled through the air with a deafening crack louder than a sound should be. In all senses and to all senses, it broke natural limits. By its arc Crona saw it would land short of the caravan. He doubted it would drag through the earth to cover the remaining distance. The runway was a clear stretch of grass and dirt, a broken carriage in it, leaving no clear reason for the spectacle. The amount of effort above the baseline required for the act did not then correlate to possible victory for the clown who threw it. Their risk was high, but where was the reward?

There was only a single person who might be hit.

One person.

Mifune.

The swordsman stood, feet planted and unadorned of armor, his head half turned to the daunting threat.

The tree landed at a low angle, roots first, and sent up a thick cloud of raining dirt. No use looking that way.

Crona turned his head, and saw a perfect line up of hated enemies.

The style of fighting Mifune forbade he use drew in Crona's psyche in totality.

The black swordsman opened a wild, shouting charge down the line of jesters, and swung as a berserker.

Once again, whether for bloodshed or corruption, Ragnarok smirked.

* * *

Marie had braced herself over Maka, but now saw the tree land short. A burst of dirt earlier fogged their vision of the battle, but it appeared empty, the entire theater of combat spirited away. The clowns which assaulted the caravan's defensive lines withdrew to join their comrades at the sides.

"It fell short," Marie said in amazement, with the secondary purpose of informing Maka, still gripped by its fatal terror. "The tree is down; it's already over."

"What about the fighters?" Maka asked, shaking. She stood up and peered out. It was no use; the first blast from displacement blurred their field of view, but the explosive landing turned the grass field into a sandstorm-ridden desert.

"They sped to the sides."

"In that little time?"

Marie realized her implication and turned back to the field, aghast. The clowns might have fled, but Mifune and Crona? The caravan's primary defense?

Justin came to them, "I'll perform a memorial ceremony tonight, for the lost. Before then, we can not allow the caravan to fall."

Maka clenched a fist in angry disbelief at his words. She ran across the camp and vaulted over the flaming rope, off a log. Marie reached to stop her, and was about to run after her when Justin put a hand on Marie's shoulder. "I gave my word; she will live through this."

As she ran toward the huddling line of murderous jesters, stuffing her gloves into a pocket, Maka remembered Justin's promise as well, and were she not running, would have shouted her reply.

'Weren't they of your camp?!'

* * *

An artless fighter.

A fight without style.

A multitude of equally unskilled opponents. No, they were never skilled in violence, but turned to it of desperate necessity; Crona held nurtured skill, and tossed it aside for revenge. Ragnarok revelled in this, and could not have made Crona hear a word against it if he felt otherwise.

The flurry of dispatched clowns went on, an onslaught.

In Crona's mind were no thoughts. They had come earlier, and would return later. Overpowering and contrasting emotions instead swirled as he tore through the singular rank of adversaries. No swing was swung with thought, and no intentional composition was made in passing.

Finally, as if a message sent to save him, Crona's swing failed to connect; the ghost was already defeated. A stale tree branch dropped to the ground where the clown had stood. Surprise knocked him from the trance of vengeance, and Crona came to his senses. He eyed the path of the branch backward.

It led to the voluminous and felled tree.

Was the branch knocked off by the landing and launched by the explosion, only to land now? But it pointed straight to the tree, not up. Crona looked on in confusion.

To his left, another clown was impaled by another branch. This time he saw the launch, but to see it did not ease understanding.

It simply shot out from the trunk.

Crona stood immobilized, lost to what action he should take, when there was a sound like a rodent scratching wood. None of the ghosts moved either, equally bewildered.

A barrage was unleashed.

For each ghost, a splintered branch. In some cases, two or three. Nearly simultaneously, several scores of missiles shot forth out of either side of the grounded trunk like so many arrows from a King's Guild's squadron's quivers.

No ghost was left uninjured, and a held breath later, the field was covered by a dark mist, obscuring all things.

The battle was ended.

* * *

Crona wandered through the field of misty dusk with his arms before him and his hands faded from sight. Nearly blind, with only enough vision to feel fear from what might appear in it, he called out over and again, shouting "HEY! Is anybody there? Hello! Is somebody out here? HEY!"

He couldn't tell how long he ambled there, while Ragnarok stifled laughs at his side. It annoyed him, but also comforted Crona, as it kept panic at bay; not knowing the joke was another step down from not understanding a joke, however, and his uncertainty filled the space left by evacuated panic with unease.

After an indeterminate amount of time, five minutes or two hours, a light broke through the fog and he went toward it. "Hello?"

"Crona?"

He stopped and considered turning back, away from the girl hunting him, but resolved to see his role through to the end. "I'm here, Maka." Ragnarok had the decency to stop laughing.

They walked to each other's voices, and soon he saw her. Maka's right hand was wrapped in a green and dirtied cloth, and in her left she carried a tree branch lit as a torch. Her face was covered with soil and sweat, and she smiled in relief at seeing him. "You're alive."

"Have you found Mifune?"

"Eh? No, I thought you two would be together. Weren't you?"

Crona faced the direction of the shrouded tree, "He must still be out there, somewhere. I got to the side in time, but somehow he survived the crash."

"Are you sure?" Maka asked, but Crona was already stumbling away from her and toward the tree. She saw his back and throughout her body felt a chill. "Crona, stop."

"Why?"

"You're wounded. Badly."

He stopped.

Maka put the light near his back, and restrained a gasp.

"How wounded?" Crona asked, his voice shaking, after she said no more. "I don't feel it; is that a bad sign?"

"Nn... no, I was mistaken," Maka finally said. "It's only the armor that's broken, not your body."

'My armor?' He reached around and felt his back, then stiffened. There were two parallel slits, two finger's width, running entirely through his armor, gambeson, and cassock. 'Ragnarok's wings,' he realized.

"How could this have happened?" Maka murmured, inspecting it. She put the torch on the ground and poked a finger into one of the slots. Crona's back arched and, startled, he squeaked. "Your back wasn't even scratched, whatever happened. The skin is still smooth."

Crona spun so his back faced away from her, "I guess I was just lucky when one of them swiped at me." The point on his back she touched felt distinct from the surrounding area, the sensation prolonged by cool night air, and Crona took a step back, his body restless.

"Is that what happened?" Crona heard doubt, but Maka didn't press further. The two went in search of the tree, Crona self-consciously taking soft steps to keep from drawing Maka's further attention. It was ten minutes before they saw a dark wall just beyond their sphere of vision, and after a few seconds they reached the tree.

Crona no longer felt worried for Mifune; Ragnarok whispered in his ear and explained the situation on the way. Crona tapped the bark with his knuckles, before he took a high step and kicked in; his foot broke through.

"That tree is huge!" Ragnarok told him. "Even if those ghosts are superpowered, they shouldn't be able to do that much, unless it isn't as heavy as it should be." Walking with Maka made Crona unable to reply, so after a pause Ragnarok tsked and went on, "It's dead. The tree, it's dead, and as hollow as it was once hallow. Well, the inside is at least. It'd be impossible to toss it like that otherwise. The sellsword only needed to cut a door and climb in as it passed by, nothing too fancy or difficult. If he's alive, it's because of skill and luck. The real miracle here is the thing didn't collapse a hundred years ago."

Crona widened the opening in the bark with his foot, and ducked in before he offered his hand to Maka to help her in. "Keep the fire away from the edges, but don't let it go out," he said. She followed his unnecessary, common-sense instructions, and the light played off the decaying inner wood to illuminate the interior of the natural titan.

Large splinters stuck inward like lances and stalactites at every angle. The trunk was only a few inches thick and hung down in sunken patches, colorless moss growing on them. Abandoned bird nests were scattered and smashed on the ground. The dark tunnel continued farther than either could see, though the mist was not present inside the tree.

The two looked at each other, and journeyed deeper. A path of broken splinters and moss-impressed footsteps marked their wake.

The end of their spelunking came when the torch's light reflected back at them. It came from the polished blade of Mifune's sword, planted in dirt where the trunk rubbed off on impact, next to where he sat waiting for them. Around him the bark was thinned, the result of a chain reaction of colliding shards and splinters he carved like dominoes and triggered to defeat the clowns. Mifune heard their footsteps and looked up with his usual humorless face, before showing them a satisfied grin.

Crona smiled back, and thought, 'If power is only worth what it protects, Mifune must truly treasure Angela.'

* * *

"I'm glad only your leg injured," Crona told Mifune after the caravan's irate physician left their wagon. Mifune insisted with as few words as possible he be treated in the guard's wagon rather than the doctor's. Crona understood it was because of Angela, and explained Mifune was sensitive to the pollen of the medical wagon's mobile garden of medicinal herbs and flowers.

Mifune sat up with his arms crossed and tilted his head. "I should have come out unscathed," he said. "I was careless, and now half a week will go to waste."

Crona watched out the back of the wagon at the rising sun between the receding trees of the orchard, and sighed. 'It's over.'

Mifune motioned to the wagon's entrance, and Crona leaned out of it to look around before he replied with a gentle smile and shake of the head. Mifune knocked the rough wood floor, and they heard a small scramble in the back compartment before the little girl crawled under the curtain to sit with them.

"You were careless," Angela said.

Mifune grunted in agreeance, and she sat snugly beneath his arm.

Crona reached a resolve, and turned himself to face Mifune's side. "I need to ask you about something. As a comrade."

Mifune nodded.

"Until recently, I was present to and assisted with terrible things," Crona said. "I didn't realize I had a choice, or even that it was wrong. But now I do, and I can't pretend those things didn't happen. How to deal with that, how to reconcile myself with the past and future, has been on my mind the past few days. I want to know what you think of it, since you have more life experience for context to view it through, I guess." Crona stared at a knot in the floor and waited for Mifune to answer.

"You want redemption?"

"I think so."

"Then act well from here on. Live well. Do the right things instead of the wrong. In time, you'll be satisfied."

"So I just have to wait until I've lived long enough the good I've done outweighs out the bad?" Crona considered it, "That doesn't sound wrong, but the harm doesn't go away."

"No, it doesn't."

They sat with the sound of the wheels against the orchard road. Angela sneezed.

"Crona, do you remember all the people you've hurt by those 'terrible acts'?"

"No. It went on too long, since before I was Angela's age."

"Then you can't make amends with them personally. Even if you could, the past wouldn't change. But, you only helped the villains?"

Crona looked up in surprise at hearing Medusa called that, his mother who raised him, but found himself agreeing. "I didn't do anything to stop them, and worse, I helped them. How can that be 'only'?"

"So long as you weren't the main villain, it's fine-"

"It's not fine," Crona began, then realized he cut off his mentor, and cast down his eyes. "Sorry."

"You can't quantify good and evil. But you might be able to approximate them. Improving the lives of tens of thousands would balance the scale, wouldn't it? In your eyes?"

"I can't do anything to help that many people," Crona said. "I was barely able to help this caravan of a hundred, and that was mostly thanks to you."

"But would it satisfy you?"

"I think it would satisfy anyone, myself included."

"Then do it. No one but you will tally your sins, so once you feel redeemed, consider yourself to be. Help, no, save a city or state, and the slate will balance to your view, the only one which demands atonement. And from there live well, as I told you."

"I can't do that much-"

"Then you will have to wait as many years as you did evil, carrying out as much good."

Crona turned and hung his feet over the wagon's back, and closed his eyes before the rolling trees and rising sun. When he turned back he said, "I've heard some things, here and in Armsung, about the place we're going to. Not much, and maybe I'm reaching incorrect conclusions, but I can find out the truth when we arrive tonight. The Duchy of Monmouth... I think I may try to save it."

"From what?"

"Its ruler, a duke I've heard some refer to as the Dark Lord."

* * *

Maka sat watching the canopy go by overhead, while Marie rested her eyes. Maka felt a tinge of pain in her bandaged right hand where a clown slashed it during her attack on their lineup after the tree fell, armed only with the abilities Stein taught her and Marie polished.

"Who was that priest?" Maka asked, and broke the quiet. "The blonde one, Justin."

"Hmm? He's a Maestro I've known for awhile," Marie said. "He's the one who brought me to the Guild, actually, and let me stay under his wing until I got used to it. Justin Law."

Maka considered their apparent ages, and thought, 'You were under his wing? Shouldn't it be the other way...' "That was Justin Law?"

"Mhm."

"The famous apologist?"

"Mhm."

"Those theological quotes... He was quoting himself?"

"Probably. He asked me to proofread a few things back when I was a rookie, but I don't remember them well-"

"But, that can't be him! We studied Justin Law's writings in class; that priest is too young!"

Marie laughed, "He just got an early start, is all. Those writings didn't have a date of publication pressed on the cover, did they?"

Maka remembered her teachers and senior students discussing his works as though they were formative to them. 'In just a few years, he rewrote everyone's conception of Death?' The feat deepened her reverence for the writer. "I've met Justin Law?"

"Mhm."

'I can't wait to tell Soul about...' Maka's thoughts trailed off again. 'If I find that possessed priest and exorcise him, I'll become a Maestro whether I have a Disciple or not. But don't think I've given up on bringing you back to the Guild, Soul!'

Birds chirped above as they sought material for new nests.

Maka lay down and put an arm over her eyes as her thoughts turned to Crona. His escape from the tree's fall zone, the holes in his armor, his face, his blatantly dyed hair, that his weapon had changed from longsword when she first saw him to rapier and back again; and under his broken armor, he had worn a black cassock. Any of these alone, or even in a pair, she would explain as a mistake, or coincidence, but taken altogether...

She felt another tinge from her hand, and held it above her head to look at. The caravan's medic told her it would be healed in a few days, but weak for a month. Before they began to travel again that morning Joe announced they would reach Monmouth by evening. The mercantile caravan would then leave five days later. A few days was plenty. Maka knew either she would find the priest in Monmouth or, if she was mistaken, he would find her.

The sentry sighted the city walls when they came out of the shady orchard. At lunch, from opposite ends of the noon camp, Maka and Crona gazed upon it with contrasting anticipations.


End file.
